Whiskey Knot
by Cicatrick
Summary: Old West AU. Han/Leia. A lost affair. A small-town scandal. One year later, two stubborn people are thrown back together to either love or hate each other.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hello again! So, I've been playing around with this Old West AU on Tumblr (I know, I know, hellsite) for a few months now. It's much looser and less rooted in the OT than NHI. I promise very little involved plotting; _Whiskey Knot_ is an excuse to indulge myself with UST. If that's your thing, read on!

xo

Cic

CLOTH

She'd only gone into town for muslin. A length of curtain-cloth for the house her stepmother had left her, the hated house she'd come back to claim. In her second-best dress, second-best hat pinned to her braids, Leia Organa had set forth, closing the white gate neatly behind her.

Leia had forgotten just how punishing summer got in Whiskey Knot. As she walked Leia tried not to sweat, tried to ignore the heavy drag of skirts in the wagon ruts of the dirt road. Tried not to think of the scrubbing her trip represented, the time at washboard and tub and clothesline. Her velvet hat was unseasonably warm, and Leia yearned for the shield of the old floral bonnet she threw on in the garden, the one that provided shade but also air circulation. In the sunset, it cast a wonderful multicolored glow over her vision, light diffused through calico. This reminded Leia of the Tiffany lamps in the library at Bradford. But it would not do to think of her first home now. It would serve her well, Leia told herself as though slipping blinders on a horse, to think of today's goal, and nothing else.

 _Cloth._ In late July heat Leia could feel every layer of it from the inside out, in the order she'd donned it: lace-edged short bloomers and chemise, stockings, then the canvas of her summer boots; her stature did not allow Leia to bend to button her footwear once corseted. She knew it was considered indecent to dress in this order, but who was around to see her? The big frame house was empty, and the meadow beyond that fell to swollen bend of river was deserted but for Aldera. The mild mare too old now to ride.

Rather brashly Leia looked at herself in the mercury-glass. Her hair yet unbraided, damp from her bath. The combination of high, tight boots and the shape and tint of her natural figure blatant in her thin, unstructured undergarments looked positively brazen, Leia felt an odd thrill to note. Like a picture postcard she'd found her first year away at school, tucked into an anatomy text like some ironic jest, though probably just hastily secreted from a professor. A daguerreotype of a woman in her frilled underthings, kneeling on a tufted velour stool– a dancing girl, Leia imagined, or a Parisian muse. Leia shook her own wavy head, regarding herself as through a pinhole lens ( _was this what he_ – but no, no). Perhaps the posing woman was the artist herself, a self-portrait bulb concealed in her hidden fist.

As she turned away from her reflection Leia blushed not with shyness but with the faintest transgressive pleasure. But then, the despised corset. The device Leia had blessedly ignored for days at a time here alone, the entire week she'd been back…home? Was this home, or simply where she'd found herself? Yet she no longer felt that home was Massachusetts, either, though some part of Leia would forever be eleven and removed from that lovely, leafy campus. Doomed to return, then be removed again– ah, she bitterly thought as she laced her stays, the fates had a corset's hateful symmetry.

After Leia was fit and cinched there was her corset overlay, and the elasticized lace thigh-bands pulled high over her stockings to keep them in place. Petticoats. Only _then_ the dress, that second-best, a violet lawn check discreetly mended at cuffs and high neck. Leia's meticulous stitches further hidden with a length of gray satin ribbon she'd found at the treadle sewing machine upstairs. Not the right shade of gray for the violet, and satin was more garish than Leia liked but it would have to do. At least the shine would deflect the eye from the darns that had looked right in the evening lamplight, but glared like sutures of the flesh in the prairie day.

Bearing all this cloth, Leia walked. And corset or not, she held herself so rigorously upright that it was easy to misjudge her diminutive height. She passed men in the fields, farmers, hired hands, then carpenters framing new houses and storefronts on the outskirts of town. Men at work: how Leia envied them their shirts and overalls and trousers. Their rugged fabric that seemed to repel filth. Or to so absorb it as to render it invisible to the eye, the critical eye of the deacon, schoolteacher, the banker's wife. The Eye of Town, searching out weaknesses, little grounds for excommunication. Twill and denim hid what silk and lace displayed. Men were allowed perspiration, permitted proof of their exertions, the evidence of living. The disparity had maddened Leia since she arrived– well-educated as a child of Bradford faculty, her studies _and_ her play co-ed– in Whiskey Knot and had her hand strapped raw and red by the schoolteacher first thing for the way her skirts flew up on the board swing. The swing was for boys. Something in Leia had ignited, then; her cheeks, her palm had ceased their heat but her heart had not quit its burning. Even when she left town last year, at eighteen, Leia had still dreamed of slinging herself freely astride a bareback, half-broke horse and tearing off with a _haahwhoop!_ the way she'd seen–

 _Cloth._ Leia would get muslin, yes, and perhaps a length of whichever durable poplin was cheapest—now this dress was feeling slightly ventilated at the points of her elbows, though Leia knew no fraying was visible yet. She'd checked this, double-checked in the cloudy glass of Meredith's vanity set. Yes: a durable poplin, perhaps a new dress pattern, that heavy muslin. Curtains seemed a silly notion for a woman without immediate neighbors but the upstairs bedroom was impossibly hot with no blinding on the windows. Hot enough that Leia did not sleep so much as lie down to drift from one surrealistic wish or grief to the next until morning was marked by the grandfather clock.

An hour, it took. An hour from the house to Silver Street where Leia stepped, in her neatly buttoned, heeled, torturous boots, up to the creaking wooden sidewalk. The waxed canvas squeaked and pinched at her lisle stockings, but she would not limp. She would not think of the blissfully flexible oxfords she'd bought in Boston. They were for boys but they perfectly fit Leia's tiny feet; she knew they would not do on the social parade-ground of the wooden boardwalk. Not if she meant to stay locally tolerated long enough to sell her house.

Damned boots. Still, Leia would not move like Betsy Armstrong, just ahead, mincing into the milliner's. No, Leia would not move in slow state like that, like the river barges, paused long enough to draw admiration from the young men lounging outside the livery. She did not look to note the spot where one young man had used to lounge on the bench, long legs crossed at the ankle on the railing. Untangling harness, or oiling tack _._ No, Leia did not slow, and she did not look back. In fact, at the very _shadow_ of the urge to ache at his absence Leia redoubled the firmness of her step, as though to impress her slight weight into the pine slats. She didn't want to be back in Whiskey Knot. If she had to be, Leia would leave a mark.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

All that forgetting. Yet Leia knew him at once.

She knew his voice, that baritone. Her skin registered its unique vibration before her ears, before her hearing; yes, it was her skin, tightening. A voice she'd heard mostly raised in laughter, in quick banter, in boastful intent: a voice carried back to Leia on breezes– he was always going somewhere, and at speed. Forever setting up a race, declaring that the latest horse he'd broke _c'n go like blazes._ But now his tone was not challenging, impatient, daring. It was quiet, yes– but completely without the soft caress it had got when– no. Not the day of her foot, she would not think of that.

Leia moved down the aisle. Evil, evil boots, carrying her silently, not squeaking for once, marching on against her will. Perhaps her wretched traitor foot recognized its rescuer, taking her closer. Closer, until– _Oh._ Rather boldly she'd once mentally chosen _delicious_ to describe his scent when Leia was seated behind him in church, though the preacher would surely scold that this word trod perilously close to lust. She remembered the jostle of long legs in his family pew, next to his older brothers who were tall, too, but dour or mild enough for stillness. But Han's attention wandered out the stained-glass window sponsored by his father, inclining his profile to her, bathed in blue. And the look on his face: his forehead creased with boredom so weary it was almost plaintive. It was almost… _lonely_ , it was–

It was just the same, his warm scent, sun-dried cotton and leather and salt. Hint of his mother's famous cedar-oil soap that took the blue ribbon every year at the county fair. Leia passed the paper sleeves of pins, the spools of thread and stacked bobbins. The thin bone needles for fine stitchwork, the thicker steel for knitting, the crochet hooks and hat hooks, the lacework hooks and buttonhooks, everything a hook drawing her closer. Leia's grip constricted on the hank of coarse upholstery floss. Tight as Leia's corset stays, the bands at her thighs, the lace at her throat.

At the rear of Miller's Dry Goods, near the table where Mary snipped with flawless economy into bridal peau de soie, he stood. He stood next to the fine, tall Eileen Howard, regal and pleased with herself in her elaborate layers of silk and frothy prim collar, ivory cameo as finished and correct and unnecessary as the wax seal on one of Mayor Howard's letters. Leia saw him from behind: lanky as ever, in dark blue serge trousers. His coarse broadcloth shirt should have been white but was tinged permanently dun with the fine, airborne earth of his father's farm. Suspenders that emphasized the width of his shoulders. Appealing, unashamed patch of sweat between the broad blades of his back. The skin exposed by his rolled-up sleeves was deeply tanned, and the back of his neck, curved to allow the bend of his head, had a paler strip just under his defiantly open collar-band. As Leia watched, he hitched a hand in his leather holster. The long fingers of the other moved restlessly through his sandy hair, as though feeling his exposure to Leia's eyes.

Lips pursed, Eileen Howard tidied her gloved hand through those overgrown strands. Retreating into the aisle of notions, Leia closed her own hand against the sting of thread. Closed her eyes against memories, stillborn and precious, now utterly vicious. Her heart squeezed in her chest like a bulb in a daguerreian's fist– insisting on a rapid chain of images, one after the next. And in all of them the same lopsided grin, the mutable eyes, the jagged line on the chin that she'd heard called the bite of Beelzebub. But Leia had always thought of his scar as a feature akin to a stripe on a horse's muzzle, or a directional marker slashed into bark. Or something burned into the skin by iron, a fiery stamp.

 _Blazes. Brands._ Words of speed, of heat, of possession, of freedom.

 _Han._


	2. Metal

He knew there was ore up on Falcon Ridge. Stored somewhere in the banks just past the sparse woods, where the creek emboldened itself to river. There were traces of both gold and silver out on the sandbar, far enough out a body had to wade—or swim—depending on rainfall and meltwater.

Falcon Ridge was as high as land got around Whiskey Knot. It was a bit of a climb, and Fixing grumbled, balked. Even yet morning, it was hot. Han had to dismount at the base of the covert trail he'd blazed into the trees and coax. Fix dug his iron-shod hooves in so heavy you'd never guess he was fleet and fast as a peregrine when Han let him open up on flatland. _Damned spoiled beast._ Growling, Han brandished the looped reins. The big dappled gray bared his teeth in a chuckling whinny, knowing this to be idle threat. Han sighed, hooking his hand in the stallion's bridle, tickling the whiskered chin as they walked deeper into jackpine and blue spruce. It was true, Han would never beat a horse. Instead Han hit his own upper thigh with leather in absent rhythm with his muttering. _No work for you, huh Fix. Quick or nothin', that it?_

Under the brim of his hat Han squinted at the sky, checking for his arcane set of co-ordinates. A broken branch, a black feather stuck in pine pitch. Han prided himself on his sense of direction, but it had been a year and...he shook his head, reaching for the map and claim papers. He kept these in the back pocket of each day's britches. Not in his jacket, which Han slung off in the saloon, and not in the saddlebags he intricately tied ( _A Guide to British Navy Knots_ was a favorite boyhood Christmas gift from Pat) but were vulnerable to pickpockets when Fix was hitched to a post. Not even his tie-down holster provided storage secure enough for Han—Robert made a real barnum of collecting all their guns before supper. At night Han slipped his papers under his goosedown pallet.

His claim wasn't a secret, technically. Anyone was free to go to the Land Title Office and see Han Solo had filed an area claim last week. That he had a year to prove the land he'd staked harbored gold or silver, one year that whatever he found there was his. The trick was to let on to no one that they should check.

So far, so good: no one in Whiskey Knot looked to Han as the clever Solo brother. _Especially_ not Robert—not even Pat, Han thought with a smirk that felt cavalier but looked, from the outside, faintly hurt. He knew he was seen as the tearaway, the reckless youngest, the despoiler of...no, all he had to do was keep on as he was. Working the farm jobs Robert assigned him, taking the pay Robert afforded him, showing up at the table and bowing his head into Robert's prayer. And if of a Saturday night Han hankered to hitch Fixing to the gigcart and ride into town for cold beer and cards or billiards, why that was fine so long as he didn't get truly plastered. So long as Ma drifted off thinking her baby was tucked upstairs by nine of the clock. So long as he was up on Sunday morning, washed and shaved for church. Ma was ill and she still hadn't recovered, Robert liked to remind him, from the shame Han had brought to the Solo name. And if Pop—

With a soft slap to Fixing's flank, Han cancelled the thought.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Han couldn't explain how he knew it. It was as though some buried sediment called to the minerals in his own blood. Particles magnetized in the chambers of his heart, and travelled. Veins called to veins and pulled him onward.

They'd found the grains of gold and silver just off the sandbar. Collected in the rich silt at the foot of the solitary birch that improbably grew there, slim and white and stubborn. The Han Solo who'd been a lovelorn fool—the Han Solo of before—had let that tree put him in mind of a name, a face, a form. But _this_ Han Solo was a year older and he kept his eye roving well away from the pale column.

He looped Fix's reins to a thick branch in a shady spot, fed him a carrot and then another, softly scolding the big horse for a glutton. Placed his hat on a stump, toed off his boots, knitted socks, shed his shirt and suspenders and trousers down to the thin sleeveless singlet buttoned to the waist of his cotton undershorts. Han did not look at the birch, flourishing its full green leaf as though in defiance of the heat, even as he strapped his kit to his back, his pan and pick and can and cloth. Not even when he slung his gun-belt around his neck and struck out through the hip-deep water toward it. Damn tree might as well be a simple cross of pine. Yet it didn't feel like the spot where everything died. Even now, to his vexation, the birch remained Han's own marker of treasure.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Nothing. He found nothing. Han ended up resting on his back in the shallow slope of river, letting it flow over him. Hands laced behind his head, eyes closed, studying the fine veins in his lids. Listening to Fix whicker and snuffle from the shore. Listening for the train. From up here you could not feel the thrumming of the Western Express, but the whistle carried and it made Han's skin prickle even under the chill of sunlit, tumbling water. Here he was a man of near twenty-nine and _still_ he yearned after that shrill call to freedom.

To hear it now Han's hand constricted at his skull as though around a humming steel rail, where he used to place his pennies. Other boys spent theirs on peppermint candy but copper was lucky, so said Han's Pop. And the red-gold color seemed too important—precious, elemental—to Han to trade for a measure of sugar. But there was alchemic honor in altering metal, though he could not have articulated that as a boy of six, could not as a man who'd lost his father since. He'd stored those pressed discs, their values and faces erased, in his dresser, under the handkerchiefs his mother embroidered for his breast pocket and he never wore. They were still there; Han checked when he came home last month. Han didn't know why he'd kept the thinned copper. It cancelled no debts, and he no longer believed it had power.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"I don't aim to run no beg-ride."

"Now, that's not what I said, baby boy."

Han's angled lip twitched, but he went on curry-combing Fix. Robert stepped closer, rested a hand on the horse's neck, pulling his muzzle into a hard stroke. Fix twitched away. Robert wasn't violent, but his affection had always had, even with Pat and Han, that domineering element. Robert withdrew his touch, untroubled.

"What I said to Mayor Bill," Robert went on,"was that you'd go right past Bright Oaks, so it'd be no trouble—"

 _Mayor Bill._ Han snorted. _Bright Oaks_. Who in hell spoke-

"...no trouble to run his Eileen into town. Since I'll be sending you this aft anyway."

Han's eyes narrowed; still he kept them on his fingers, looped into the steel handle of the comb. " _Sending_ me huh."

"Surely. To the chemist. Ma's laudanum."

Han let the breath he'd drawn for argument issue softly from his nostrils. He nodded. Robert delivered Han's shoulder a hearty slap. Han moved out from his brother's grip, hung the comb on its hook. At the mouth of the stall, Robert turned back as though struck by a sudden thought. This was a pet tactic of Robert's.

"Now: Eileen's a fine girl," Robert said.

"If you say so," Han said through his smile.

"So leave your hat on your bedpost. And no spitting, boyo."

" _Spitting?"_

"Betsy Armstrong told Florence you spit nigh in her path. Right on Silver Street. Noon last."

"Straight bullshit."

Robert's face softened into triumphant sympathy. "If you were in your cups...?"

"No. Middle of the day? No." Han snapped. "An' I don't do chaw, you know that—"

"Eileen's a real prize," Robert mused. "You play your cards right—and you love your cards—who knows?"

Han hated that look, Robert's hazel eyes twinkling like Han was some schoolboy, all his concerns a child's, his hopes and dreams a child's. "I'm not meanin' to hear this," Han said, as evenly as he could.

Robert chuckled. "Do you _mean_ to be a bachelor all your-"

Han wheeled to face his brother, finger extended. "Hire me out on errands, fine. But don't you, don't _you_ talk to me about—"

"See here." Robert's affable grin pared itself away, leaving a thin scimitar blade. "That's just like you, Han. You should be grateful, after all your fuss with that...salt-lipped girl. All that local talk, and the likes of Eileen Howard will be seen with you? She _asked_ for you. The mayor's damn daughter! Lord knows why; Ma always said you were the looker."

Hitting Robert, twelve years Han's senior—unthinkable before. But now. But now. _Salt-lipped girl._ Fix's warm nuzzle of Han's fist was all that stopped it.

"Shave first, pup," Robert said, allusive twitch to his eyebrow. Han did not flinch at this extra twist of the knife.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Han _did_ shave, but not for Eileen Howard's sake. He shaved because he had to bathe anyway, muddy from the river. And Han couldn't be scruffy if he'd be bringing Ma her dose later. She'd kiss his cheek goodnight, feel his whiskers, and wonder at his health.

As Han peered in the glass above his bedroom washstand, long frame still bare and damp from the galvanized steel tub before his hearth, he thought of the day under the birch. Han's expression remained impassive as he bearded himself with suds, scraped them off. Rinsed the gleaming steel he kept lethal on its leather strop, peppering the steaming water with stubble. Began again, dragging his cheek taut under a finger. Maybe. Maybe if he'd—

The straight razor whispered viciously into Han's flesh, just under his cheekbone. This error was rare for a man of his deftness, and he hissed with self-disgust. He was a farm boy, felt no squeamishness and ignored pain, but when Han saw blood drip into the china washbowl he moved fast to blot the cut with his alum block. In the mercury glass he watched the trickle down his jaw thicken, then stop. And in this way Han likewise blocked the images that threatened to shipwreck him: red ribboning into water; her face, neck, bosom pale with shock, pale except for where he had-

Han braced his weight on the wrought-iron stand. Let his eyes close and head drop back. _Enough._ Not that, not _her,_ not any more. Not that day or any of the sweet time before. Ah, by God, by the good Lord Christ. By all the devils if that's what it took: _enough._ It had to stop. She was gone, and Han did not have sufficient aluminum salts to seal some stupid, stuck-bleeding heart.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He supposed most men would give a tooth to squire Eileen Howard into town. She did gleam from the bench of the gigcart next to Han, her hair that deep brass. Eileen shifted, in elemental increments, as Han drove Fixing on. At first Han figured this to do with the layers she wore; he'd never known, not until—well. Han was amazed at how much cloth and steel and whalebone women bore. But Eileen's face held none of the discomfort and fierce resentment he'd seen from...before. Eileen seemed pleased, turning her May Queen smile and wave on everyone they passed. Her movement was slow, controlled, but still somehow it reminded Han of a buffalo nickel flipped in the sun—seizing the light, beaming it back, deciding who lost and who won.

She also talked blue hell. Tearing into her elder sister's upcoming wedding party. The whole twenty minutes bumping along behind the horse—and what had got into _him?_ Normally Fix kept the gig gliding slick, seemed to pride himself on it, but today his trot was so jarring it was almost snide—Eileen listed stuff she didn't think was good enough: her sister's dress pattern, menu, flowers. She hated that the event was to be held in September—and here already July 29! Almost no time at all, Eileen said, for her to plan her own dress.

 _Her_ wedding would be different.

And here, Eileen paused to look at Han. Her eyes shallow, cool and bluish as the saucers of skimmed milk he set out for the barn cats. And Han felt the gulf left by another passenger, another waiting gaze on his face: fawn-wide, fawn-warm, but clever as a fox. Brave as just herself. Eyes tearing up with speed, awed with freedom. Hazy and heated with what he'd believed to be love, fool that he was.

Han opened his mouth; the pull of his jaw split his shaving cut. Eileen recoiled.

"Huh," he said, to his bloody fingers, not to the pampered daughter of Mayor Howard.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Han dropped Eileen at Miller's Dry Goods and went to the chemist by himself. Eileen wanted to come with him—she dug a real grip on his bare forearm, smiling at everyone on the sidewalk—but Han took his arm sharply back. She got her ride, fine, but Han would not be walked like some dog. And he'd be damned if he would order his mother's morphine tincture in front of someone who never shut up. Han cared nothing for his own reputation but he aimed to preserve his Ma's dignity.

Glass vial safely tucked into the little pouch on his gunbelt, Han strode back up the creaking boards. In Miller's Han wandered the hardware wall, poking at scythes and plow-blades, the tools of his father's trade. His eye longingly fell on the prospectors' gear. He'd sure like a banjo shovel and second perforated pan, maybe a rock hammer and—

He reached the rear of the shop, where Eileen directed Mary to flip out some fancy bolt of cloth. Finally Han spoke. "You 'bout ready to go?"

Eileen stroked the silk as Mary cut. Those cold eyes looking at Han like this should make a lick of sense to him. Coyly Eileen held the edge of the white fabric to her face. That face, perfect and empty as an advert for Pears complexion soap. "Do you find this becoming, Han?"

God, Han felt such great weariness then, such a yoke on his back, it was as though he'd quaffed his mother's draught himself. And indeed his mouth did harbor a metallic flavor, like Ma complained softly of as she drifted off to opium relief. Han's mouth twisted against the taste, or maybe with bitter amusement: Betsy Armstrong might see him street-spitting after all. He rubbed at his neck. There was a prickle there, a funny itch like the one he used to get in his gut when—

Impatiently Eileen reached up, flicked at his hair, as though the compliment she expected was hiding there. There, where Han would normally have worn the hat that wasn't good enough for her escort.

"Ain't nothin' to me, Eileen," Han said. His voice slow and easy, grin toothy and stubborn as Fix. "I'll be outside."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Down the sidewalk Han could see his horse, tossing his dappled gray head like Han was trying to fit him with a bit. But Han never used one when he rode Fix. They understood each other, man and horse, spoke with pressure of knee and reined hackamore. Han shook his own head then, but before he could repress it the memory had its teeth in him.

He was teaching her to drive. Han made the mistake of saying, back when she said she wanted to learn, _Didn't reckon ladies drove_. This wasn't disapproval, it truly was reflexive report of his own experience: his Pop had always driven their cart and Ma had contentedly watched the world go by.

 _There is no singular manner,_ she said in her ferocious way, _for a woman to follow._

Han could not argue, truly did not wish to argue, and she seemed to divine this with her soulful-shrewd brown eyes: that Han had no quarrel with the notion. Surprise she could accommodate, she welcomed debate, but she would not brook arrogant opposition.

So it was that they'd been driving, on the deserted, quiet roads where they wouldn't be bothered, which suited Han Solo down to the ground—how she used to perch on the gig bench between his thighs, her proud spine tight to his belly. His hands over her tiny ones on the reins. And this evening she asked why Fixing was bitless even when fit to harness. Han explained that the one time he'd tried to bit him, Fix had simply opened his lips and let loose unchecked drool. Deep gray chest a dark bib of wet. Slobbered his way all down Silver Street.

She began to quiver. _But you're known for—_

 _I surely am._ Han tightened his right hand on hers. _Ahh-ahh, Princess, don't slacken on the gee._

 _Why, I don't believe it. The gifted young horseman couldn't address—_ Even viewed only one-quarter, her smile was so glorious that Han had to close his eyes as he feigned offense.

 _Pardon me, miss. My horse steps real pretty under my hand. You'd think him for a Lipizzaner..._ Han tugged the brim of his hat... _but for the flood of spit._

 _You jest,_ she'd said, and ah, to feel her there shaking with mirth, warm and close. _Han. A flood?_

 _Forty days and forty nights, Sweetheart,_ Han said into her neck, and he could still sense the spot where her head fell back against his shoulder, fell back with her full-bodied laughter. And under the awning of his hat she kissed Han through laughter or laughed through his kisses all the way home. Fix's gait a floating dream even as they neglected his steering.

 _Dunno why you're laughing. He was vile,_ Han protested, grinning as he swung her down to her feet a safe, discreet distance from her gate. _Fix was so damn vile, I—_

 _No. Revolting,_ she punned, those eyes dancing up at him. _Fix was revolting._ Her red lips budded with that pleasure she took in the deftness of her tongue. Her facility with words was a pleasure that was somehow shared with him, though he could not share her fluency. But she had shared her sweet sharp mouth with him in the soft June evening and then she'd cuddled Fix. _Rebellious boy,_ she said warmly, hiding her face in the bowed neck of some noble Arabian ancestor. _Aren't you._ She closed her eyes in the fading light, smiling as Fix nosed her pinafore pockets for the sugar cubes she sneaked him from Rouge's pantry.

Han bought the damned ring the next day. Circlet of gold, set with a pearl luminous and rounded as her shoulder. It was still hidden in his dresser, wrapped in Irish linen that smelled of copper. Standing on the boardwalk, Han hissed breath through his teeth. _Ah. Son of a bitch._ Gripped the skewed bridge of his nose. Why was today so fraught with her? Fuckin' Whiskey Knot. He knew returning would bring back—

Fix nickered. His sound of affectionate welcome, but with Han half a block removed. Han's head shot up: his hands curled like hay-hooks into the rough bark railing. Bit his plump lower lip to blood.

There she was, the holder of that swift, sweet tongue, the adamant spine. Of those delicate capable hands that fit just so in his, that he'd so carefully described to Patton the jeweler. The owner of those knowing brown eyes, the chin that insisted on the faceted and sovereign nature of her purpose. She stood down the block, up on her toes on the planks, her face pressed to Fix's sun-baked hide. And Fix, that turncoat, he was hugging her back, had slung his neck near around her shoulders like a silvery feather boa. _How'd you like to be a horsehair sofa, you traitor._

Han no longer tasted metal: not the copper of blood, not the iron bit. He no longer wanted to spit. Now Han's sense was visited with fresh water, cherry cordial, the rose salve she used to soothe her lips. He'd bought the tin of it for her himself at the chemist's because it was embossed _Sweetheart._

He made the silent shape with his own lips that he had once pressed to hers: a wish, a breath. A curse.

 _Leia._


	3. Earth

In summer, in Whiskey Knot, dust permeated everything: cloth and sleep, bathwater, breath. Blown grit intolerably stung the eyes- particularly Leia's, Atlantic-bred and, everyone said with what the young girl interpreted as distaste, abnormally wide. After her first night in what had been lost Meredith's back bedroom—spartan and sweltering, so different from Leia's leaf-shaded, book-filled nook next to Papa and Breha's study at Bradford—Leia found fine clay mist on the windowsills, in her thick eyelashes, when she woke.

 _You'll get used to it_. Rouge spoke in pronouncements. Some were simple and others complicated but they were always resolute, the things Rouge said. Leia would grow accustomed to the dust, the dry air that chapped her lips; to being landlocked, to the lack of a local library. Leia would adjust to the schoolteacher who instantly disliked her, the classmates that found her aloof and removed, to her father only a month under Boston earth. Rouge was not particularly religious but she was a born ascetic, believing all trials could be bested with borax, taut stitches and correct outlook.

Rouge was a generous woman, whatever tensions existed between her and her sister, Breha. As Breha wrangled her sudden bereavement, a lady biology professor fruitlessly seeking work in the hometown she hated, Rouge busily undertook the raising of Leia. The tall, strong, braided woman put Leia to work with her in the garden. Taught her to sew seeds and seams, to can, cook, clean. It was work Leia loathed but Bail had always said to never turn down instruction. Discipline was discipline, he said, knowledge was knowledge and all of it was valuable.

So Leia did not complain as she grimly ripped roaming pigweed from between beefsteak tomatoes, stalks of corn. No: no matter how much loam accumulated beneath her fingernails, she did not whine. Leia was too willful and clever to be a martyr, and she knew personal preference was irrelevant to survival. If she meant to support herself, she would need skills. And Leia surely meant to support herself: daughter of a mathematician, Leia could calculate the probabilities of being full-figured, fatherless and fourteen. Foreign and female in a small town filled with ranchers, cowboys, horse breeders, farmers. Profiteers of fertility.

 _Cow-eyes,_ the boys in the one-room schoolhouse called her.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Leia was fourteen the first time she saw him. And Rouge made a pronouncement the first time Leia saw him, him around twenty-one years old, walking the high carriage-hitching railing outside Lucky's Saloon. His face flushed with drink (and this a Saturday noon!) but without fear, despite being well-elevated beyond the hard-packed dirt, plus his handsome head a good six feet above his boots. He did not weave, and he did not creep along; somehow he walked the narrow beam as casually as though down the broad planks Leia traveled with Rouge.

He was egged on by a group of onlookers gathered outside the false-fronted tavern, clutching pints, smoking pipes and cheroots, spitting chaw. They pelted the young man on the rail with pennies, peanuts, clumps of peat. The catcalls seemed playful, but underneath Leia heard her teacher's tone: _aren't you a busy beaver,_ Mr. Thatcher had said last week when he returned her paper on Charles Darwin, graded with the _A_ she'd earned and he could no longer withhold for fear Breha Organa would descend on him again. _Flat-earth idiot,_ Breha had seethed through the hatpins in her teeth, savagely fixing her velveteen hat to her black braids _._ Yes, Leia knew resentment masquerading as joviality, and it was here, too: _Learn you to take my money at faro, boy_. And _Walk the plank, Solo_. At the time, not knowing his name, Leia thought they meant _walk it alone._

And he did, with defiant insouciance. He moved easy in his lean hips, tall frame aggressively relaxed, but under his hat– even that flippantly tilted back– his wolf-green eyes were sharp on some fixed point. And there was something in the set of his long fingers, slightly opened and minutely flexed, that spoke of heightened physical instinct. In his strong throat, Leia could see the hammering of his heart. And he struck her at once as not of the others. He struck Leia at once as set apart.

Then: _Oh shit. It's Spence._ A buzz of fear, excitement, went through the gamblers and drunkards, tobacco-stained fingers pointing to an approaching cart. _It's his Pa_. The boy on the rail did not stop his command performance, though there was a visible twitch at his stubbled jaw, a cut of the gaze to dust dispersed by oncoming wheels. He wavered, ever so slightly. But he reached the end of the beam and pivoted on his boots, quick and smooth, swept off his hat into a sly bow for the saloon girls. They whistled, laughed, promised him a waltz. The men booed; the acrobat broke into a slanted, hard-white grin, this breaking again into deep, resonant laughter, dark as coffee, as rich and bitter.

He turned, then, and recklessly ran the whole beam back, all at once and towards Leia, in the opposite direction from the approaching cart. His pockets were percussive with winnings, but in his face, that face she later grew to love and then frantic to erase from memory, Leia saw something other than his mocking, lopsided smirk. What Leia glimpsed in that young man, as he clapped a hand to his head to anchor his hat and hurled himself off the rail into space, was pain. Like he damned himself for a kind of spendthrift of grace, a wastrel of his innate gifts.

He hit the dirt road so hard he went to his knees, raising a cloud like conjurer's smoke. He rocked swiftly back to his feet and took two ragged steps that were not drunkenness but his own ungoverned momentum. He almost stumbled, to the cheers or jeering of the gamers he'd fleeced, then resolved into a long-legged jog. He did not quite run- he was somehow too nervily self-possessed for this- but he made his fleet escape down Silver Street. And it was then Rouge declared him _Han Solo._ Disgusted, exasperated, firm with that zealot sureness of her perception. _That boy was born to be in the wind._

Leia pressed her fingertips together, into the sting of thistle-burn, the needle-pricks where she'd missed the guard of Meredith's earthenware thimble; a child's, but it fit Leia's tiny fingers. Just this morning, Rouge had said to her with authentic pride: _Your stitches stay this even, you can hire out with me as a seamstress._ And Leia stunned herself with her own laughter as the daredevil hustler vanished in swirling dust. Her laugh was angry as his had been, yet delighted as though by a dove pulled from a sleeve and tossed aloft. In the wind: to have that choice. Oh! How he'd leapt into space. She'd envied him. To be born to what you were and know it. To have the freedom to heed it, chase it.

Leia Organa didn't see Han Solo again for four years.

XXXXXXXXXX

Leia was almost eighteen, on her way down Silver Street with a bundle of darned pillowslips for the hotel. She had been taking in mending, bolstering the money Breha sent. Leia's beloved stepmother had gone back to Boston; she'd been offered a teaching position at a women's college with room and board, a scholarship for Leia guaranteed next September, if she was willing to supplement it with domestic work.

The sidewalk was crowded. The annual summer horse sale had just finished outside Whiskey Knot, and Leia briskly wove through strangers, intent to get her errand run so she could make her way back to the house. Rouge was sick. But Leia stopped short when she heard a whinnying shriek. Instinctively she turned and pressed through bodies to the railing, peeping out from between shoulders. She gave a low sound of distress.

In the middle of the street, a thin drover was beating a horse.

The big gray stallion was only a couple of years old, one of the few horses that hadn't sold, likely because he was an obvious mongrel. He was not a handsome horse, but he did have a manner as steely and _his_ as his distinctive spotted-silver coat. He did not shy from the blows to his flanks and rump, given with the dull, thick leather handle of a whip. Instead he set his bean-shaped body, shifted his front hooves in a threatening almost-prance. He tossed his head against the coarse rawhide halter, pulling against the drover's rope.

The drover struck the horse again. The gray trumpeted unmistakable rage. Dug in his Thoroughbred back legs and reared fast enough to fiber-burn the drover's palm. And the drover yelped, in spite of himself, provoking laughter from the crowd clustered on the boardwalk.

This was when Leia felt not just horror, not mere disgust, but real fear for the life of the horse—a coward can go to violent lengths to insulate himself from the truth. And indeed the drover reddened, bared his teeth and hit the horse in earnest, in his convex, fine-veined cheek. Leia's heart ached- that face was almost fragile compared to the brute depth of the barrel chest, his powerful haunches. His expressive blue eyes flashed with something deeper than physical pain.

In the drover's hand, the handle of the whip began to turn toward the palm, the cutting end unfurling like a poisonous serpent.

"Stop." It tore from Leia's throat, raw and loud.

Faces turned to her, amused, aghast. Shading his eyes against the harsh overhead sun, the drover turned too.

"Miss?"

His feigned confusion was a kind of social patience, a tedious observance of Leia's station as a lady. A chance for Leia to reconsider, or remember her gender. She set her feet wider.

" _Stop._ " Her voice shook, but it carried, Leia discovered. She was the daughter, after all, of professors- but her tone hummed with its own authority, the outrage that was uniquely hers.

The drover's coating of deference peeled into discomfort, then sneer. "Miss, don't trouble your head. This is man's business, and—"

"Oh _well_ then." Another voice, profoundly male. "Stop."

He came striding up the center of the August street: that tall figure still lanky but more filled through the shoulders and back than when Leia had seen him last, walking that railing with uncanny tipsy grace. He'd been away working the railroad, some said, or fleeing gambling debts; another rumor held he was a gentleman stagecoach robber. But there was no real clue, on his person, to where he had been or what he had done. He wore a gray cotton shirt and twill vest, fitted chamois trousers worn soft but tough. A gunbelt strapped to his trim waist, wrapped again at his long thigh. Kerchief, beard-stubble, tan under his plain dark hat—and somehow Leia was glad of that, somehow a flashy white Stetson would have betrayed the notion of Han Solo that, Leia now saw with quiet astonishment, had persisted in her subconscious through the years.

The drover did not answer, turned his back and dragged at the horse, tried to force him down the road. Han followed. He did not seem to hurry even as he quickened his step; somehow he projected languidness and fury at once. He brought two fingers to his lips and whistled, harsh and piercing. The horse's ears swiveled and he tossed a look back over his long neck; Leia could almost see the exclamation point—or the question mark—appear over the animal's head.

The crowd murmured appreciation at this communicative trick. The drover turned, narrow hand clenched around his whip.

"You telling me you know horses better than I do?"

Coming to an easy halt, Han lifted a shoulder. "I told you to stop. Nothin' else."

The man opened his duster with the placement of his fist on a hip, just enough to show his pistol. He spat in the dust to the left of Han's plain black boots. "Move on, buck."

"Don't believe I will." Han flashed a crooked smile. "Don't believe you _can_. Not with a ton of halfbroke horse."

The drover laughed. "You couldn't stay on this horse two minutes."

Again Han hitched a laconic shoulder; Leia wasn't sure if it was acknowledgement or disregard of his chances.

"You like him so much?" The drover set himself back on his raised wooden heels. "Spend twenty bucks and he's yours."

"Left my money at Lucky's faro table," Han said carelessly. "But I'll spend twenty minutes. Tell you what. I say he'll let me ride him down this block. And when he does—"

"Within twenty minutes?" The drover smirked. "You got a hankering to die."

"—and when he _does,_ " Han pointed an index at the drover, then hooked his thumb back at himself, a gun in reverse. "He's my horse."

Just down from Leia on the boardwalk, Mayor Howard pulled a fat gold pocket watch from his waistcoat.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The first four minutes Han spent in standing, in study. His hands extended, open, as though to demonstrate their emptiness. Though her own hands were tense on her mending Leia smiled at his profligacy with time, the confidence and self-faith behind it. The horse stared back, iron forelock tumbled into his eyes giving him a frowning countenance. Han began to walk around the horse, casual as he had long ago on the rail, the pads of his long fingers just skimming the twitching gray hide. Han was murmuring so low Leia couldn't hear the words; perhaps it was only croon.

His hand flattened to caress. The horse looked wary, perplexed, but allowed the touch. Han gave him a private, tiny smile. Then he flexed his long legs, bounced ever so slightly on his boots, his hand sweeping the great shoulder up to the whiskered chin. He undid the rope from the halter, let it drop. The crowd muttered, restless, as though they'd paid to see some show they were being denied. And the drover, shamefully unable to steer the horse, drove the onlookers instead: toward scorn, toward impatience. Leia concentrated her energy on the man running his hand, now, up and down the long graceful neck. At the crowd's hisses the horse, who had started to settle, tensed his muscles. Han shook his head, began a gentle chant: _no no no no._ Eight minutes. The horse soothed, Han put pressure with the heel of his hand to the broad back. The horse rippled along his spine, but did not resist.

And then, so quickly Leia could not truly register it, Han shifted his weight, a bend of knee into controlled leap, and he was astride the bare-backed horse. The crowd breathed as though they'd seen defiance of gravity—clamping his knees, a triumphant grin twitched at the corner of Han's angled lips and he slipped a hand between the velvety ears, stroking in thanks, in reward, in-

The great gray horse bucked, hurled his smug burden back to earth.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

 _Sixteen minutes,_ Mayor Howard boomed, his face florid with laughter. The drover raised his rope-burned hand, making a sign of four with his fingers to the amusement of the audience: four hard tumbles of the challenger to the packed dirt. Leia bit her lip, but she kept her eyes fixed to the action, feeling that to look away from him would be betrayal, an abandonment.

Han Solo's face was ghostly with dust, streaked with red. He knew abnormally well how to fall—there were no broken bones, but his chin was split so terribly that his gray shirt and vest were purpled. His hat was gone, and his already unruly hair stood stiff with sweat and dirt. Still Han, like his equine opponent, maintained a battered dignity.

Moving forward yet again, breathing hard but padding calmly, Han swiped blood from his chin with a torn sleeve, spat more blood into the street. Always Leia remembered Betsy Armstrong's theatrical gasp at that. And Leia felt the townspeople, still on a fickle fulcrum between disavowal of and civic pride in the newly returned youngest Solo, veered toward mocking condemnation. Han felt it too; she saw his mouth round in defensiveness before that callous caul slid over his expression.

Leia rounded on the scolders. "Where was this offended propriety," she said, her words savagely measured, "when that sadist was abusing his horse?"

She didn't say it simply to protect; Leia burned with genuine wrath at this misplacement of priority, of judgement. Let a horse be beaten, whipped in the street, but providence forbid the dust be sullied with saliva. But it _was_ feeling for Han that gave Leia's words their ringing energy; it was this emotional power that tilted the collective mood irrevocably in his favor. And Han's eyes flicked to Leia, then, his forehead furrowed in surprise, then dawning of—what, Leia thought, gratitude?

 _Eighteen minutes,_ Mayor Howard crowed.

The horse whinnied as though in final challenge. Han turned away from Leia, back to his task.

"Hey hey." Han's voice soft, almost playful. "What's all this about, huh? I ain't gonna hurt you. I ain't gonna—say, why don't we try bein' friendly-like?"

 _Nineteen. Nineteen, boy._

"Hey, pal, why you gotta be so hell-fired? Huh? C'mon, you gonna show me up in front of a pretty girl?" The crowd tittered. Next to her father Eileen Howard preened as though accepting laurel wreaths. But Leia realized, with a jolt, that Han Solo had brought his eyes back to _her,_ flaring gold. Under a minute left to his bet and Han spent precious currency of seconds on Leia's face. And Leia gazed back, feeling something course forth from her own eyes, a will, a wish. A thrill that rose to her face as heat.

The gray stallion cocked its head, gave a low nicker that was not capitulation—no, never that. But it _was_ invitation, and Han knew it, eyebrows arcing in joyful acceptance. Nineteen minutes, twenty seconds and he was on the horse again, settling in deeper this time. The horse letting him this time, welcoming. The rider settled his reclaimed hat— _how?—_ on his head. Thirty seconds left and Han touched his brim to Leia, his full grin made all the more bright and striking by its grimy, beaten setting. And she laughed back— _oh go, go—_ Leia cried back at him, heedless of stares, of public attention, her voice hoarse with joy and urgency.

Wrapping a hand in the mane, other hand to the crown of his hat, Han tightened his long thighs, set his knees, tapped his heels to the horse's flanks. And just like that the stallion was off, casting hoof-shrapnel of packed dirt and stones, tearing away with such heirloom power that the crowd groaned and quivered in primitive superstition. But Han was ready for the explosion, welcomed it, bringing his lean body close, head tight to the rhythmic-working neck. And as they passed Leia saw Han Solo had closed his eyes, in some private, swooning communion with the breeze, face smoothed and calmed in cleansing speed.

They blazed the block in six seconds. Mayor Howard's thick thumb plunged the stopper on his watch, bellowing the win of his constituent. All was eruption of the spectators, exuberant and gleeful, all doubt and mockery of him forgotten. The drover threw up his hands in defeat. But Han did not stop to accept his praise; all he threw back was a howling whoop of freedom. Leia laughed and did not stop. She laughed until hid her hot face in a stack of stitched linen for fear that her mirth and relief and excitement and vindication edged, somehow, on weeping.

XXXXXXXXX

Another summer, later. Now. Leia's canvas boots kept a proud, unbroken beat all the way from town to River Bend Road, even as she turned into her white picket gate, even across the wooden porch. Head held high until the door was closed behind her, and then she tore off her hat, ripped at her choking lace collar. Unbuttoned her dress, let it puddle in the hall. Mending be damned, careful correctness be damned. Han, Han and Eileen Howard. Eileen who had done nothing to stop a horsewhipping. Han back in Whiskey Knot, Han taking a suitable wife and settling into life like everyone else. Leia ripped the seam of her corset overlay as she jerked it over her head. She clawed her corset stays apart, lips trembling, fingers whitening at the tips under the tightness of the silk cords. The hated armor fell to hardwood with the heaviness of a corpse, of another self.

Leia went out the back door barefoot, in her gauzy underthings, damp with perspiration. Aldera dozing in the meadow, a sleep closer every day to death. And Rouge dead, and Breha dead, and Han a...a fraud. Han with his laughing green eyes- or amber with hunger and tenderness. The velocity in his kiss, the dark-sweet private voice, the smile that flashed radiant symmetry for only her—or so she'd believed, how, still? _oh fool, fool._ He was a bounder, like Rouge had warned her. And Rouge, dead. Breha buried with Leia's father-

Leia seized a cultivator. In the thicket of tall corn, overgrown, Leia went to work. Her breaths unhindered now but heaving so that she almost wished herself back in her corset, caught between those rigid bone brackets. Braced in entrapment. What was it people around here called college? Her ivory tower.

 _Ah, Princess._ Was it so, that Han classified women like this? Some fitted to bridal peau de soie, some left clutching cornsilk in furious, futile grip. _Pretty girl._ But he'd called her brilliant, too. He'd brought her books from his elder brother. He'd defended—remembered—

Dazed with heat, with exertion, Leia found herself sinking to the ground. Above her, the free breeze rattled in spear-shaped leaves; and under, the black earth curved and went on turning. The ridged faultline on the sole of Leia's foot curled helplessly into fertile dirt, curled as though with his touch. She'd witnessed Han's scarring, he'd witnessed hers. Yet his scar a badge, and Leia's a brand.

She drew her bare knees to her unbound chest, the skin there long-returned to its unmarked milkiness. Oh, in that fine, treasure-laced sand, how he'd held her hips in his huge hands and sighed—warned— _Sweetheart. A dare is different than a bet._ And Leia brought her wrists to her forehead, pressed her face to her forearms and wept.


	4. Salt

Robert Solo smiled with infuriating mildness, pressing the scalding Epsom compress to Han's chin again. Supine on the oilcloth-covered worktable Han hissed, digging his fingers into his own thighs.

"Hell _fire_. You gotta grind that salt in? I ain't no—hey, _hey!_ "

"Just trying to clean the wound, little brother."

"Horseshit—"

"Horseshit's what you get," Robert snapped, "rolling around in the muck of Silver Street."

He poured whiskey into Han's wound. Pain-shocked, Han sat bolt upright, bonging his head off the oil lamp suspended by a chain from the stable rafters. Clapping a hand to his skull Han gave a reproachful... _gobble,_ like a furious turkey. As though this minor grief taxed him more than the makeshift surgery. And Robert and Pat belly-laughed—not cruelly, in fact so naturally that Han had to laugh, himself.

But Robert's laughter soon skewed nasty. He splashed more whiskey on Han's chin. Snarling, Han lashed a boot at his brother's hip. "Son of a—"

"You have _the same mother,_ " Pat sighed from the new horse's stall.

Robert brandished the red-hot tack needle. "Fetch the smelling salts, Pat, in case Han swoons."

Han rolled his eyes, took a heroic belt of whiskey, another, and lay flat again. The new horse whinnied as Pat filled his trough with hot bran mash, dried apples and molasses. Han smiled to hear the big guy's happiness.

"That horse," Robert said, bending to Han's injury, "is fixing to kill you."

"Hey, Fixing," Pat murmured, running his palm up a silvery flank as the horse eagerly chewed. "That ain't true, is it? Sweet boy like you."

The searing needle pierced Han's torn skin, pulling the gash closed with tallow-waxed cord. Han growled, jerked in spite of himself. Robert flicked Han's ear. "Be _still_. Want this pretty mug scarred up worse? Big performer. Disappoint the girls?"

Han ground his teeth. _Performer._

"...speaking of girls." Pat strolled over, slapping a rolled-up seed catalogue into his palm. "Wasn't all knight's virtue, rescuing Fixing here. _I_ heard, our kid was flirting."

"He'll be twenty-seven in October." Robert sat back from his work, raised an eyebrow at Pat. "Well overdue for courting."

 _Well overdue—_ Han's face twisted at the hated pet phrase, the memories it evoked, the notion that life was set to Robert's pocket watch. Likewise, Pat winced before he resumed his customary easy smile. At thirty-six, Patrick Solo was a confirmed bachelor; Robert had married Florence at twenty-three. Now, at thirty-eight, he was father to a fleet. _Ah, Pop_. Han often wondered, in the month he'd been back in Whiskey Knot, if Pop had dropped dead alone in the fields to get away from the boredom, or from the _noise._ Noise Pop never tolerated in his own children. This chaos must be why the orderly, methodical Pat had moved into his own tiny cabin edging the farm.

"Didn't ask her to _wed_ me." On the table Han laced his fingers over his bare, bruised ribs. Unfazed as always by her youngest son's behavior, Ma had taken Han's shirt, vest and singlet the second he'd limped into her kitchen, set the bloodied clothing to soak in cold saline. Closing his eyes, defiantly relaxing his long muscles, Han looked like a drifter basking in the sun, even as Robert resumed stitching his chin. "Just liked her spirit."

"So you didn't notice her big brown eyes, then," Pat said. Han didn't answer, but Pat knew the twitch in his distinctive upper lip from penny poker at Ma's kitchen table. Nudging up his wire spectacles, Pat grinned. "She _is_ a bright thing. Once saw her win the county spelling bee. Challenged the judge on _exegesis._ Scrappy as a little badger, her."

Robert looked sharply up. "You mean the hired help boarded over with Rouge Antilles on River Bend?"

Pat said neutrally, "Rouge's folk. Breha's girl." He turned a page. "I used to swap books with Breha in school—d'you know, Bobby, she's become a professor? Back east now." Pat cleared his throat. "And you'll remember Mer—"

Frowning, Robert closed off his stitching with a tight, jerked knot. Han's sandy lashes fluttered with what could be pain.

He said, more softly than intended, "What's her name?"

"Leia, baby boy," Pat said, brown eyes twinkling over his lenses. Coming from Pat, diminutives never condescending, but kind. " _L-e-i-a_. Get it right or she'll brine your hide."

XXXXXXXXXX

Han Solo ran his mind on a clean, straight track. Lean, fast and linear. But over the next weeks, as Han completed his monotonous, tiring farm chores, he found his thoughts wheeling on a hub of _her:_ the girl leaning over the boardwalk rail, demanding mercy for a homely horse. And as he saddle-broke that horse, now known as Fixing- who'd do near anything for a salted apple; _hah! Got you now, greedy feller,_ Han murmured from high in the sling, rubbing Fix between the ears- he imagined showing her what she'd saved.

 _Leia._

He told a few lies about his sudden preoccupation. When Han left the farm yet again to head into town, to stock the larder with flour, salt and sugar, Robert cracked _Aren't you mother's little helper_. Jogging down the porch steps before anyone could see color crawling up his neck, Han smarted back _Gotta keep your litter fed and watered_.

And as his small, daily farm wage built up in his recent absence from Lucky's Saloon, Han told himself he was just saving money to leave- Utah, that's where Chewie and Lando said they were prospecting next—when empty pockets hadn't rooted Han's feet before. Nothing to do with the fact that Lucky's faro table had no view of pedestrians on Silver Street.

 _Then_ Han decided that River Bend Road was the only spot in town quiet enough to get Fixing fit to harness. Up and down that road Han drove, better part of a month, every evening after his chores. Into sunset after sunset. Long after Fix had the gig floating like a barge over dusty ruts and divots.

If Han _had_ been searching for Leia, he would have been sorely disappointed.

One late-August evening, beat from hard work and damp from his bath but too- what? _something_ to sleep, Han sprawled on his back in his undershorts on his bed. Tossing his old, cracked rubber ball hand-to-hand: slow, fast. Fast-fast, slow. Restlessly listening as Ma read stories to Robert's brood on the screened-in porch beneath his room, her familiar, gentle tones carrying up through Han's open window. Sweet nonsense about castles, dragons. Princesses tucking handkerchiefs into knights' armor.

Had he conjured her?

What was it, what _was_ it? Leia was surely a comely creature, rich brown hair and creamy skin, those... _eyes._ But that wasn't—well, not _all_ of it. Han liked womenfolk, yes, liked when he caught their fancy. But he was most enamored of his own plans. Lust, even for the sweetest and shapeliest, had a way of weighing you down, so Han resisted that ballast more than most. Leaving at speed, travel, freedom; this is what Han craved. _Missed_. All that he had room to lo—

He skipped his rhythm on the ball, sending it wild across the floor. Thumping like some ungoverned heart.

Han blinked, then waved off this rare failure of co-ordination. Hell, he knew he wasn't much of a knight. Not with Denver gold-dust on his mind, the Great Salt Lake marked on his map. Not with his one-body bedroll, narrow and light. Not with this rusty line on his chin, his yen for escape. Yet as he dozed off Han returned to her, the girl leaning over the rail, holding her cloth out to him. Huge warm eyes, regal voice, crown of tight-wound braids. A princess shining from the dumb, stuck-up, straight-plumb- _mean_ populace of Whiskey Knot.

XXXXXXXXXX

He'd leave in November, Han vowed to himself, the second the wheat and corn were in. He wouldn't stay for Robert, and Pat would never ask for help, but Han could see Pat was concerned about the first autumn without Pop. Pop would rise from the damn churchyard dirt if his sons let his precious harvest slip.

Also, Han admitted with shameless self-interest, he'd badly missed Ma's harvest feasts over the last four years. Every fall Jane Solo and the local girls she hired cooked and baked for weeks to feed the crew of ravenous fieldmen. Ma made her prizewinning potato chips then and only then, hard-boiled in corn oil. Damn, Han could live on those. The deep golden flavor, perfect texture, rime of salt wringing his mouth with pleasure.

Women at Ma's knitting auxiliary believed Jane should take advantage of her recent bereavement, leave the gruelling work to Florence and this year's hires. But Han knew Ma wouldn't, and indeed she'd sewn a black apron for her widow's weeds. Started talking to Robert about the girls she'd heard good things of, with preference given to those struggling. Harvest at the Solo farm was a good two-month job, with high wages and fair treatment, and Jane was exacting but kind; an ex-schoolteacher, one quicker to laughter than to scolding.

Pop was strict, but he wasn't cheap. He understood his wife's work needed its own support. Robert, though, brought in fieldmen but announced he wouldn't hire kitchen help. His eldest daughter was fourteen now, he said, _well overdue_ to work with Florence and Ma. Ma wasn't happy about this, Han could tell—Flo was awful in the kitchen, and Lizzie untried- but Robert was now the senior male.

And so the first breakfast of harvest, the biscuits were burnt. The eggs were fried to a lacy crisp; salt pork re-salted, the hash was wet and worst of all _there were no chips_.

None of the men complained. It was more a hum of dismay; an uneasy omen on the daunting project of the first harvest without Spence Solo. _This_ was Jane's famous feast? The murmur drifted in the dining room, above the long benches filled with male flesh grimly fortifying itself for the work ahead. And Robert laughed. Said it in front of Ma, quickly filling baskets with her own perfect but insufficient biscuits: _Quit your bitching, you sound like a flock of women._

XXXXXXXXX

The first morning was a shambles. Shamefully below Spence's fearsome standards and through it all, Robert rode a wagon bellowing red-faced orders. Poor Pat- all his intelligent suggestions ignored.

Lunch was unspeakable. Instead Han slapped farm cheese between two pieces of Ma's buttered bread, drank milk from the glass jug and stalked back outside, swiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Back into the flow of scythe and binding, stack and walk, kneel, pull, throw, plow. This pulse the sole thing that kept the day moving forward. It was not hard labor Han hated; it was boredom; _boredom._ He found peace in rhythm but loathed routine.

As the afternoon wore on into disaster, Robert began to publicly insult Pat. He mocked and taunted until the hulking, clever but sensitive middle brother cracked, dropping his scythe and stalking into the house. He did not come back for an hour and a half, long enough that Han began to wonder, began to think he should go look. _Say, Paddy, you're the reader,_ Han said, slapping Pat's thick back when he returned. _What was it you said happened to Abel?_ Han felt a little better when Pat leaned on him in laughter.

XXXXXXXXX

Just before supper Han took off his hat, slipped his suspenders down around his narrow hips. Stripped off his filthy shirt and singlet and primed the pump, wincing at the pressure on his wheat-blistered fingers. When the water burst forth he ducked under, gasping his relief at the icy sluicing off of sweat, chaff and anger. Han spun a bar of Ma's soap between his palms, worked lather into his hair and under his arms. Let it run in cedar-scented froth over himself, into the waistband of his trousers. Rinsed and refreshed, he pulled a shirt and singlet from the clothesline and headed for his horrifying supper. Blotting his face and hair in clean cotton, Han rounded the back of the farmhouse towards Ma's small, immaculate laundry porch, where he meant to dress.

Three hired men sat on the shady back steps, free of sweat. Watching Fix in the meadow, licking his salt block. They did not see Han. Two men he faintly knew of from the saloon, the last some drifter. Sneaking early out of work would have never happened under Pop, Han thought with a sort of distant grief. Smoking near the meadow—

"...boy overpaid for that beast alright. Paid in blood."

"He wasn't trying to buy no horse. You see the Organa girl? She's come into heat."

Whistles, mutters. Han recognized the type of appreciation that swung between possession and resentment. The sound that rose in the wake of unexplainable luck, craved the crack of unbreakable horses.

"Yeah." Sly laughter. "You get it now? Solo was peacockin', Frank. And he ain't the only one gonna fan out for her. She's real sweet."

"Leia Or _ga_ na? _Sweet?"_ A hiss of smoke. "I tripped her up on the boardwalk last week. Just to talk. Talk! Well she dropped her—dunno, her mending? in the dust." Cough, spit. "I says, _Why don't you stop and chat, Miss?_ And she fixes me with those funny eyes and says, _Can a man chat with Irish linen stuffed in his throat?"_ A choke, boastful in its sourness. "Well holy shit. She ain't sweet, she's pure curing salt."

Laughter.

"You can't pick up a girl with no dropping her to her knees on the street."

"Yeah, Donnie: that ain't the correct order."

More laughter, edged with daring.

"Not for you, mayhap. But the way she looked at Solo? We should ask him at supper: say boy, was the cloth she was offerin' you still war—"

Han had the novel sensation of blood in his temples. He completed the corner, found himself around the corner. Three men looked up, blanched, from the steps, sharing a thin-rolled cigarette.

Clean clothes clutched in one fist, Han stabbed a finger at the dirt road that led off the farm. "Get on out."

"Jesus, Han, we were—"

"Yeah, you _were._ Get on out."

"Naw. Naw! Come along, we put in our full day's—"

"See Pat, get your pay." He couldn't bite the words off sharp enough. "Don't be back tomorrow."

The largest hired man stood. "You're a big boy now, huh. Came back a man? Easy with your big brothers around."

With a hard half-grin, Han crooked a finger at him. At all of them. Perhaps it was his aloneness, his half-bareness that declared his immediate willingness to stand his father's ground, now a third his own. Or the livid comet of proof on his chin. Something in Han's eyes, wide and green? Whatever it was, the men dropped their own gazes as one.

"What about supper?" one of them whined.

"You hungry? Aw. You _hungry?_ " Energized with anger, Han bounded up the stairs past them and yanked open the screen door. They wanted their food? Fine. He would grab up whatever goddamned inedible—

And instead Han stopped, ox-dopey, and stared—his brow furrowed as the field, mouth oval on his shock.

 _Here?_

After all his searching, all his errands, _here._ Impossibly here, in the prosaic spot where he had, as a child, burned his palm on Ma's bluing pot. Here she was: a tiny woman, Han saw now that they were close at last; delicate, but without fragility. Her vast eyes turned up to his, not looking down from an elevated walk. Her hands stopped in the action of lacing a checked apron at her nipped waist. A fawn, if a fawn could be brave, or enraged. Her beautiful, stunned, fierce face.

XXXXXXXXX

The laundry porch was in disarray, a year on. Now that Ma was abed. Mountains of clothes, linens, too many for Florence and her daughter to deal with: the residue of a wife and a husband and six children. The self of a dying woman, shed in layers, day by day.

Every night Han scrubbed his own clothing on the board, wrung it out in the mangle, draped it from his bedroom windowsill to dry. And tonight, at first, Han was angry. So angry that he cranked the handle of the mangle in a fever, enough that he mustered a sheen of sweat on his bare back. She was _back._ The goddamned nervy little—the goddamned nerve, to come back after she'd fuckin' sacked him, razed him flat and salted the earth. And for what? Did he mean so little to her that—

Tonight he saw her again, saw Leia that first night, hired on at harvest. Tossing a handful of coarse salt into the cast-iron pan Florence had scorched, swiftly scouring it out. Ma quietly pleased with Leia's work, the dignity of her initiative. Han not able to look away from Leia's lightness every time she entered the dining room. But it couldn't have been light, all those platters, pans, the rattling stove-lids. The weight of hair in that hot kitchen, the burden of skirts. Mangle, mending. And what, for women, at the end of the day? The half-conscious, animal weight of a man, set on receiving his day's reward. Childbed after childbed. Why _would_ a woman want to wed?

By the time he was in his room, opening his window to the cooling night, Han had an unconscious, pained twist to his mouth. The sudden ache to tell her this. To stop her on the street, catch her wrist. Ah, Leia, just to speak. Just to say it wasn't _that_ he'd wanted—not some trap, it wasn't what he'd wanted from her, never—

It wasn't her beauty that Han was after. What Han missed. It was whatever _moved_ her beauty. It was the spirit in it, avenging and desperate, alight with excitement. Something wrathful, something faithful. Something warm and mirthful. _Alive_.

He would like to tell her he thought, still, of her wild, laughed cry: _oh! go,_ _ **go.**_ The look, the look in Leia's eyes when she'd brought his hands to the dip of her back, set his fingers to the rhythm of her laces. The will in her face, the rosy pride, the breathless, kissed exchange of freedom. And Han would never be free of this.

Lips bowed, Han watched a sleeve flutter, an empty wave in the prairie breeze. Didn't _she_ know, he thought bitterly, that he always knew Leia wanted to go too; to pull herself loose? When everyone else was stuck in place. He knew alright—but the cloth would have to signal this truth to Leia Organa, and from this distance, or never. Because Han Solo would cut out his goddamned tongue before he'd ever speak it to her.


	5. Paper 1

Han stared at the wall facing his place at the Solo table. At the framed page mounted there longer than he'd been alive. It was ragged at the edges, yellowed by time, but Han could make out the sketch of unproven acres. Work and will driven into each curve and line.

Spence Solo had given this map to the then-Jane Livingston as proposal of marriage. Han didn't know if there'd ever been actual invitation to wed, or if this drawing somehow revealed the former hired man's intention to take the kind schoolteacher for a wife. Well, whatever it lacked in sentiment, Pop's plan had been sound. Even prescient. Everything here envisioned had come to pass, buildings raised, livestock trained, crops thriving. Han could almost see his own hovering ghost, waiting to be called forth into life.

There was no explanation, Han sometimes thought, for his own existence. Robert and Patrick were so much closer in age; born only thirteen months apart, then Nell two years after Pat. After her daughter died (no one ever talked about that—it was Pat who finally told Han who the framed wisp of fair hair on Ma's bureau belonged to), Jane moved, alone, into the spare downstairs bedroom. There followed, in the family bible that recorded marriages, births and deaths, a white stretch of emptiness. Surrounded by farm families with eight, ten, even fourteen children, Spence and Jane Solo had only two.

And then Han, when Robert was twelve. There _was_ one explanation that Robert rather cruelly pointed out: their father's birthday fell in early January. The sixth, to be exact. It made Han vaguely ill to consider it, but figures were figures and facts were facts. Han Solo was born October fourth, a neat nine months after Spence turned forty-five. The arithmetic seemed, to Han, a little obscene. A bit too close to the breeding shed, but why dwell on things. What the hell, Han reckoned. He was alive.

He must be. His heart hurt too damned much for anything else.

"Are you poorly, Han?" Florence asked, from down the long table crammed with chattering children.

Han moved his eyes from the picture to his plate. At some point he'd pushed it away.

"Oh," Florence pouched out a sympathetic lip before Han could say _I'm alright._

Pat looked warily up from the _Daily Beacon_ – daily in Wichita, anyway. By the time it arrived in Whiskey Knot, the newspaper was at least a week out of date. Lateness didn't deter Pat, he'd read anything: pamphlets, packets, adverts. It was Pat who carried a small ruled pad on which he noted crop returns and rotations, animal breeding, annual yield. Pat used to balance the farm's accounting, but after Pop's death Robert, as eldest, had taken that over.

Behind the cover of another serving of minced beef, Florence murmured to Robert, "Heard tell it's recently arrived, Han's…ailment."

Wincing, Pat went back to his paper.

"A recurrent affliction. A strain from the East–"

"Flo," Robert said, with level fatigue, "We all know the hired girl is back."

Evenly Han rose, took his hat from the knob of his chair. Clapped it on his head, supper manners be damned. Walked out the back door in search of another table.

XXXXXXXXX

It was rare—maybe never—that Han Solo was drawn to liquor over faro. Whatever Robert believed, Han wasn't much of a drinker, not at a couple months shy of twenty-nine. Especially after this last year away, Han kept his wits honed and close. So he _did_ try the distraction of gambling first. But even when he spied Lucky striking bets on his paper cuffs, Han couldn't be roused to ire. He abandoned his coins in the grid of cards. Moved to the bar to set about forgetting.

Erasure. Han did his best to chase it, as lager chased after sour-mash whiskey. But _she_ rode home with him all the same. It didn't help that Fix knew the way, kept on pace through the dark. This left Han nothing to do but lean back in the saddle, hands braced on his thighs, neck arched to the confetti spill of space. Mental floodgates fell and in Leia came on a tide of spirits, starlight. Sweetness. Blame.

XXXXXXXXX

Han didn't know how to approach her, at first. Even bone-exhausted that harvest night a year past, he'd tossed on his mattress. He was known to be fast with a chance, but Han sure went bust on that laundry porch. Just stared down at her speechless until it was indecent, especially with him half-dressed. Leia hadn't spoken either, massive eyes staring right back. It was a long look, charged and searching, heated. At last she broke it: spun with high color in her cheeks and hastened into the kitchen.

Through the meal Han watched her move through the dining room, small and swift and strong, balancing platters and pitchers. He felt uncomfortable having her serve him, king-idle, though the quivering in his muscles proved his own exertion. He tried, but Leia would not catch his eye; whether this was evasion or work ethic, Han could not attest. And after supper he hadn't felt fit to closely address her, barely washed from his day's labor.

Awake across his sheets later, naked and drying from the tub, Han resolved to speak to Leia next morning, when he was fresh. He chewed his lip. Breakfast would be too busy; maybe after lunch? No, that was men at their sweatiest. Evening. Evening was best. Han would skip cake, hit a quick bath, then lope into the kitchen, all easy-like. _L-e-i-a, ain't that right?_ No, that was– no. Then Han thought, shamelessly, to exploit Leia's feeling for his horse. _Got a one-ton pal would sure like to meet you._ He grimaced; that was cornier than the cobs outside. In the midst of his scheming Han inched toward sleep, and half-dreaming his script wrote itself: essential, obsessive and useless. _Princess. Princess. Princess._

Dawn broke in hard rain. Robert called off work. Pop would never have wasted a day, Pat protested; Han was privately crestfallen that Leia would not be in for breakfast. But as Ma poured coffee, she insisted someone ride out to alert Miss Organa to the cancellation. Had the boys observed how hard and well the young lady had worked? How the food had improved? Brave girl, too; rode her old mare home alone in the dark, though she was pale as parchment with fatigue. And, seated sidesaddle, hands on the reins, she could not accept any leftovers.

Over her half-spectacles, Jane Solo looked pointedly at her sons.

Robert ignored his mother, slitting a letter with the pretentious sterling opener given him by the mayor. Pat hid a smile behind his newspaper when his younger brother spoke in a way he clearly believed casual.

"I'll go." Han cleared his throat. "And. If, uh, Leia needs a regular lift, I 'spose–"

Jane beamed, touched her youngest son's unruly hair as she passed by him with the eggs and ham.

"You can't." Robert said.

Han flashed mulish. "Reckon I will."

"The hired girl boards across town–"

"She's not a boarder," Jane said briskly. " _I_ was a boarder; that's how I met your father." Her eye fell on the drawing on the wall; she allowed herself a small smile. "Leia is Breha's daughter. Rouge's niece. She lives at River Be–" Jane swallowed. "In that house, free and clear, because she's wanted there."

Robert took up a pencil and, on the reverse of his manila folder, began to figure. "Han. The hired girl boards half an hour away by cart. To get her here every day for her breakfast shift, what time would you have to–"

"Oh Bobby," Jane sighed. "I don't think we need an arithmetic lesson,"

"If one train leaves Omaha at nine o'clock going north," Han mused around a crust of toast, "and a southbound train, at three times the speed–" He thrust a thumb in his eye.

Pat choked on his coffee, and even Ma gave a decorous cough of laughter.

XXXXXXXXX

Fixing snorted from the hitching rail.

"Keep your feedbag on," Han rasped from the boardwalk. He leaned against a pillar, knuckling up his hat-brim to rub the space between his eyes. Head sore from last night's libations. Robert had given no warning of an early morning when Han returned from Lucky's after midnight. He'd simply looked up from his ledger, shaking his head as Han climbed the stairs to bed with the insular precision he got when drinking.

But at four am, a gleeful voice had split the silence of Han's room. _Mail coach day!_ Robert chuckled at the _whuhngh?_ from Han's sleep-crumpled face. _What's wrong, baby boy? You loooved to get up early, once._ Robert usually fetched the mail himself, but he'd claimed a meeting with the lawyer handling Pop's will, delayed in probate. Falling into his clothes, boots, Han had stopped listening. Even un-hungover and fully awake, paperwork made Han twitch. Today it was more than he could take.

Buttoning his vest against the chill– the mid-August darkness hinted fall– Han peered down Silver Street. Mail arrived and was sent out once a month, by five-am stagecoach. If you missed it, you were out of luck; there was no post office in Whiskey Knot. The next stop was the train at Bridal Falls, three hours away by horse.

Han checked his battered pocket watch. Four forty-eight. No one else on the street. Doors still locked in the thinning dim. A lamp winked on in a room above Miller's shop. Han scanned the false fronts of the buildings, weirdly uneasy. Pressure under his ribs, back of his neck tightening up. He felt lured into some trap. Sure, here and there he'd pissed people off, and he probably shouldn't ever go back to Denver, but Han was no outlaw. So what–

 _No._

Thus Han Solo discovered he retained an instinct for Leia Organa. That when she was near he still felt that tide of heat, radiating from his heart. Reaching the rest of him in jolting arcs. This sixth sense was distinctive, sharp and sweet. Heightening as the small silhouette came down the boardwalk. Adjusting her net shopping bag, Leia did not see Han, leaning on the far side of the post. Helplessly, though, Han watched her as she emerged from the dark: step neat and contained as her russet braids. Her spine straight, but her face– ah, Leia's face was all soft and dazed from bed, just as it was in those harvest dawns he'd picked her up.

This missive of memory reached Han's heart right before he furiously tore it to shreds. But his idiot brain persisted: _She walked?_

 _So what?_ Han snarled back at himself. Let Leia rise unrested, travel on foot in the dark. Her trials were hers; he had his own. And wasn't that just like her, to march all over Christ's acres? Willful woman, let her, let her. Let her wear through her shoe leather, her stockings, her–

Han set his jaw against the thought of Leia's tiny bare soles. Her toes like little bread-loaves, he used to tease her. Seizing them from the sand to marvel at their caps of nails, like mica chips. Leia, Leia up on those toes on submerged stone, her hands unbuttoning his wet singlet at the waist, rising on her toes to press–

 _Do not give me this,_ Han beg-threatened his mind. His heart. _Not this. Do not–_

Leia's steps came closer. Wild-eyed, Han planted a hand on the highest rung of the rail, slung one long thigh over, about to drop silent to the street. From there he could subtly cross–

From just below, Fixing snorted into his feedbag. Shit! _You wanna meet the knacker?_ Han muttered. Fix swiveled a dismissive ear at his supposed master. Looked straight at Leia and whinnied: sound muffled by oats, but unmistakably his. Leia's head jerked up. Han froze, straddling the rail. One boot planted, the other dangling into space, he looked like a gangly boy on a hobby-horse.

Leia's eyes met his for the first time since. For Han it was like being struck in the heart; an arrow that shook with its own force, coursing awful, irresistible waves all through himself. Leia stopped short and this was scant comfort to Han, that at least he had some effect of his own. She reddened, her eyes flared– Han's radiating feeling reached his own stare. Not as wetness, but bleak, demanding heat. He could not see the edge of plea but that was there, too, in his gold-and-green.

The stricken flame in Leia's cheeks drained, as though she'd sternly screwed shut some tap. She set her chin.

"Hello."

At Leia's politeness, icy and tart as lemonade, all entreaty in Han soured. He felt her Yankee frost like a slap. What they'd shared didn't run deep enough to undermine her manners? She–he– their first meeting in a year didn't dent her goddamn good breeding?

He palmed the peak of his hat, lifted it. Bared his teeth in his own churlish correctness. "Miss."

XXXXXXXXX

The mail coach was late. All through that hour's wait, Han and Leia stayed three feet apart and did not speak. But neither would retreat. Han would truthfully sooner die. Maybe his heart and horse were on Leia's side, but not Han's guts. Not his pride. He would not come down from that rail she'd caught him astride, no matter the discomfort in his thighs, his flexed instep. To say nothing of his crotch. Well, it wouldn't be the first time Leia had made Han ache there. _Like old times,_ he thought, easily folding his arms as though this was how he waited for everything.

She would not yield either. Hands curled at her sides, Leia stayed at the spot on the boardwalk where the sight of Han had stopped her, like it had been her destination all along. She would not sit on the bench under the overhang, meant to shade ladies from the sun. Leia gave no hint she felt the summer dawn rising full onto her fair skin, as though Han didn't know only too well how sensitive it was. Know how she'd disliked the freckles sprinkling her nose, though Han had adored them. The faint cinnamon constellation only visible when you got real close, so it was possible that just he had seen–

To damper the rise of pain, Han stoked his fury. The nerve of her, the…brass-dipped _gall_ to stand here looking so delicately strong, all brave and wronged, when she– _he_ was the villain in this vaudeville piece? Jesus, Han wanted to point in her face, laugh down in her face. Had the shameful urge to use his size to bully her right against the board wall. _Oh, you think so, huh Sweetheart–_

Just in time, the stagecoach clattered into sight. With a desperate grace, Han swung his braced leg over the rail and leaped down to the unoiled dirt. Landing in the middle of his own stride, hand held to his hat. No hint of interest in the small, pretty woman in her sprigged lawn dress. All history erased in waist-high dust.

Usually the coach stopped. But this one was so late that the lazy prick tossed the mail-sack from the high seat and picked up the pace. A sudden, hard prairie wind kicked up, just as the untied canvas bag hit the dirt hard enough to spill its contents. Cursing after the driver, Han managed to catch Pat's newspapers, some letter for Robert, grab up his mother's _Saturday Evening Post._

And then Han lashed out a long leg after a postcard just before it blew off down the street. This wasn't pure reflex; Han's lightning eye registered the calligraphic _Miss Leia Organa_ just before he stamped his boot down. He had the choice to let her card blow away and he didn't take it. And he instantly hated it, hated this proof of his caring. But then it was too late to release it– Leia had seen, he heard her approaching steps on the boardwalk planks. Scowling at himself, Han knelt to pick up the thin rectangle of cardboard. He did not mean to read any of it, but the same quick eye that had caught her name could not help but record other information.

Postmarked Boston. A man's signature.

Han hissed in a wounded breath. His foot was on her side, yes. She owned his leg, instincts, thoughts, the ache of his lust, his fucking heart and being hit with _this_ was his reward? A man's name on a card mailed to the girl Han Solo loved, against every grievous will of his own. A man's name bracketed with affectionate _x_ and _o_. The _Dearest Leia_ garlanded between each letter with scribbled roses. _L-e-i-a._

Han closed his eyes to see no more. But waiting there, in the jail of his skull, was the note Leia had left _him,_ on her mother's fancy college stationery. No salutation from her, no _dearest_ or _my darling_ – just his own Christian name: the written syllable infused with none of the throaty soul that used to fill it, weight it, in Leia's voice. _Han._ Against his lips. His chest, his throat. It was how he knew himself, for those eight months.

And now he knew this. Now Han knew this: she'd left him for a man. Another man, a Yankee man, and this was fair. Leia had a right to her own plan, her own contract for her own life. Han did not own her; the thought was grotesque, there'd been a war over whether one could hold the deed to a human being. She was not a document to be stamped with a kiss. Yes, this was fair. Yet fairness was worst.

Her lovely voice was close again, so close. So warm, now, and close, too close, how the hell did she get so _close_ –

"Thank y–"

Rising, Han wheeled on Leia. Her eyes brandy-warm in the morning sun, soft and surprised with his gesture. His own eyes crackling gold around the kindling of jealousy, of the humiliating exposure of his impulsive care for her. Han held out her card. Passed it to Leia between his fingers with the casual disregard of a rich man letting tobacco burn down in its thin roller. Hurt embossed itself on Leia's pale face, then the flicker of anger; Han pushed past her. Flat and final as his own name had been in her handwritten abandonment.

Han felt no satisfaction, no relief, as he stalked off towards the demon asshole horse who had started all of this in the first damn place. He felt no pleasure, no conclusive release; he felt nothing but Leia, felt her as a flame of pain licking at the rage-blank sheet of his mind. Blank, that was, but for a single scrawled thought:

 _Who the fuck is Luke Skywalker?_


	6. Paper 2

Fists throbbed like hearts at Leia's hips as she walked, driving a red surge through herself. With her rage the wind rose; the power that had let _him_ inveigle her close on Silver Street. The wind that had helped Han Solo reveal, like a winning hand, qualities Leia had loved in him: cavalier decency, impulsive others said, that he was capricious, venal, arrogant– whatever he had been guilty of, even with her– Leia couldn't have believed, until five this morning, that Han would treat her dismissively.

Not his _Sweetheart_ , Leia thought savagely. Her fingernails severing voile glove-threads at the memory of that soft gravel voice. Not his _Princess._

This past year she'd dreamed, with urgent frequency, that Han appeared under her campus window. Calling until she pushed up the sash. _Leia. Leia. Please._ Leia woke feeling, still half-asleep, that somewhere Han yearned for her. _Sweetheart. Come down to me._ Now Leia knew, for certain, that this had been delusion. Han was a con, shrewdly polishing his bashfulness, flashing it just enough. She'd not been beloved, but novelty: a distraction from habitual boredom.

If he'd loved her as he'd claimed, Han's face could not have been so closed up there on his ridiculous railing. No– erased, as if he'd dragged vulcanized rubber over his features, leaving only public requirement. How he touched his hat and grinned, hard and white– _Miss._ An address of distance, diminishment. Like Han's expression had never been open to her. Shy, even. Pleased and soft in the private evening, all those drives, humming approval as she kissed–

No! Such sentiments weakened Leia to pinkness. She would not think them. It was over. Never again would Leia grieve Han Solo.

The blast of plains August heat blew her before it, tough little kite, layers rippling at her compact form. And as she turned into her gate, Leia was again stunned into stillness. Sitting on the peeling porch swing was her closest childhood friend. Eyes closed, hands laced, using his valise as a footrest; face mild as Han's had been brutally remote. Luke Skywalker, listening to a meadowlark.

Leia was so relieved to see him, her eyes misted. It was then that she recalled the unread postcard, tight cylinder in her fist.

XXXXXXXXX

"Luke," Leia swung giddily in his embrace. "What _are_ you wearing?"

He laughed, kissed her cheek, unaffected by her teasing. Luke wore a poncho, tight suede trousers. His dreamer's idea of Western garb.

Even at Bradford, Luke assumed other selves. Young Luke and Leia made makeshift costumes, rifled onionskin volumes for inspiration: novels, plays, myths. Luke was generous in pretending, uninhibited by gender. Leia could play Arthur, Luke would play Ophelia, Oliver Twist, Athena's owl. All souls interesting, all bodies worth being, all lives attractive to Luke's empathetic imagination.

Son of the fearsome Bradford dean, Luke was brave. Kind. At Bail Organa's funeral, Luke left Anakin's side to hold Leia's hand. He begged his father not to send Leia away– horrified by the plan to board Breha on as professor, but not her stepdaughter. To be taken into domestic service at a decent house was suitable for a penniless orphan girl, Anakin decreed. Breha, enraged, refused this offer. Quit, returned with Leia to Whiskey Knot, to the stern harbor of her sister, Rouge. Luke cried as he bid Leia goodbye. As though it was all his failing.

They'd reconnected last year when Leia limped back to Boston. Luke a brotherly balm in the raw wake of Han. Banished by his father when he became an actor, Luke had inherited from his heiress mother; he shared his freedom liberally with Leia. In Luke's posh downtown rooms they got tipsy together, talked, laughed, read forbidden French poets aloud. Leia always safe to experiment with him. Their closeness never took the physical form it had with Han– deep warmth but never _heat,_ between Luke and Leia, never that pull into kiss, whisper, ache. It was, somehow, unthinkable to each.

When Breha died and Leia was again forced to abandon her education, Luke pledged Leia's tuition, rent. He hadn't known until then that Leia received schooling in partial trade for domestic work. Leia refused him. Not only was accepting such charity unacceptable to her pride, her independence, by now Leia didn't want scholarship, either. She enjoyed study but she wanted no parchment to frame alongside the diplomas of Bail and Breha. Writing papers bored her, tedious discourse numbed her, it all seemed to lead to the grave. As ever, Leia craved freedom.

XXXXXXXXX

"In vino veritas," Luke intoned, after supper. A poor rendition of Dr. Skywalker's famously sonorous voice. Luke could become anyone _but_ his father.

"Then what's in _this?_ " Leia coughed, holding up her glass. "Fisticuffs? Unlawful congress?"

Luke chuckled into his own measure of the excellent scotch he'd brought. "What do you know about _unlaws,_ Miss Organa?"

No sting in _Miss,_ from Luke.

"I'm quite sure," Leia said in her crispest Eastern accent, "that your lodging with an unchaperoned maiden is lawless."

"Pfff. Look at this place. It's huge." Luke gestured around the sitting room, furniture eerie with dust-covers outside the circle of lamplight. "I am but a weary traveler, sheriff, and judged this for a boarding house." He blinked wide blue eyes. "What can they do, tar me, roll me in feathers?"

Bitterly, Leia smiled. "Oh no. Not the good folk of Whiskey Knot."

"Listen. Are you really worried?" Luke slipped his slim cardboard ticket from his money-belt, studied it. "I can stay in town until my train–"

"Absolutely not." Leia would not see Luke rooming over Lucky's. Not that Luke was naive, with his time spent backstage, clothed mostly in greasepaint. But that was not the seedy banality of small-town vice. She would not send Luke to the saloon, nor to–

The Marigold Mile loomed in Leia's mind.

Luke brushed blond fringe from his face to look. "…Leia?"

Drink did not normally render Leia inarticulate, nor cause such constriction of her throat. She shook her head.

"I don't know what–" Luke ventured. It was true: even over their conversations, Luke, ever-sensitive, had never asked. And he did not ask now, just touched her hand. "It was a man."

Leia's resistance eroded by alcohol, Han returned to her, searingly alive. His leather-cedar smell, lopsided smile. Hair, skin, singlet wet from the creek. Coarse thumb stroking her cheekbone, fingers weaving into her loosened hair. _You can be._ The husky wire in his voice. _Certain of me._ Gripping her unbound waist to draw her close. Green eyes fluttering shut into her kiss– Leia had taken his shaky breath for surrender.

Luke sat forward. "Leia. Tell me you wanted him. Or they'll be putting me up at the local jail." This was no role, Leia knew. This sense of justice was all Luke.

"I." She nodded, closing her eyes until Han's ghost faded. "I took my own liberty."

"Come with me," Luke said, at last. "To Bakersfield."

"To the theater?" Leia choked on her drink. And do what?"

"Not rot away _here?_ I don't know–" Luke snapped his fingers at the dress dummy in the corner. "Make costumes!"

Leia laughed into the backs of her knuckles, thinking of the wings and crowns she and Luke had fashioned from pages torn from Breha's back issues of _Scientific American_.

"Oh, fine. Keep your iron spine, I love you for it but–" Luke leaned back into the fraying davenport, waving his ticket. "I'll be out there a year. More, if the run goes well. Wire me and I'll send passage for you, no questions asked."

 _Costumes._ Well, she had certainly had worse jobs. Mending the bedclothes, for instance, of the Marigold Mile. Boiled, bleached before they reached her– and yet. Leia drew in a breath, looked at the mantel clock. Past ten. She rose, moved to the airing cupboard, collected Antilles sheets and pillows to make up the spare bed. Wholesome linens, still scented with Rouge's lavender. At the door she turned back to Luke.

"I'll think about it," Leia said. "If any fool ever buys this place."

XXXXXXXXX

Days into his visit, Luke grew cheerfully restless. They'd talked hours, played chess, walked Aldera along the river, baked molasses tassies. Leia shocked Luke into delight at target practice– with Rouge's old Sharps rifle, she hit tin cans, glass bottles, the heart of every shape Luke cut from newspaper.

All girls, Rouge had said darkly, should know how to hit a man before he got close. Leia enjoyed shooting lessons much more than cross-stitch. Now it came swiftly back to her: how to stroke the trigger rather than jerk, the match of eye to to the grip. How to fit the stock at the hollow of the shoulder, brace against the kick. Oh, how much better Leia felt, sinking into the calm and rhythm of breath, the control as she shattered bottle after bottle into blazing splinters.

But soon Leia had enough of exile herself. Perhaps it was the thought of Rouge, or how the rifle felt back in Leia's hands but damn it, she and Luke would go out together. An unwed lady, a male stranger. Let Whiskey Knot say what it liked. Leia already knew what it thought of her.

So they walked into town and wandered the boardwalk, sipping foamy root beer through striped paper straws. Luke bought a huge Stetson from the tack-shop, walked out with the cardboard tag still attached to his new tan trousers, the suede pants folded into Leia's crochet bag. Too tight for him anyway, he said.

In Miller's Dry Goods, Mary stopped Leia. The envelope had been left for her a month ago, but no staff had passed it along any time Leia was in. Mortified by the omission– both women knew, and did not say, that it was deliberate– Mary offered a credit voucher for her trouble, which Leia politely declined.

The invitation was from Constance Howard, as kind as her younger sister Eileen was vain. Constance eloped from teacher's college; Mayor Howard had threatened disowning until he discovered the groom's family was moneyed. Now there was to be a reception at Bright Oaks. Constance had added a personal inscription: _Leia, I would so love to see you._

"Will you go?" Luke read the pretty vellum over Leia's shoulder.

The event was two weeks away, into September. Luke would be gone, and walking the pine promenade with a strange escort was one thing; a woman attending a party alone was quite another.

"That's absurd," came Luke's serene rebuttal.

"Maybe in your circles," Leia replied. "But here–"

"Do you _want_ to go?"

"That's not the question."

"Dosh. It's the only question."

Leia chewed her lip. She was hardly popular, but the evenings alone on River Bend _were_ long and fraught.

And then Leia recalled, in a flash of pain she told herself was scorn, Han at the winter dance. Leaning at the board wall of the meeting hall, outside all revelry. After their autumn drives, their conversations, Leia felt hurt by his remoteness. Perhaps the rides were merely a polite feature of her employment by the Solo family, and not a mark of Han's genuine interest. And so she had left– not dramatically, not with any sweep or flounce; she quietly removed herself. Not sure what she'd been hoping for.

Han caught up to Leia on the snowy boardwalk. _Parties, huh?_ Tried his smile, ease belied by his missing coat. Waved his big ungloved hand in that way he thought was airy. _Pah._ Han was quiet a spell, pacing his long stride to hers and then he stopped, caught her wrist, confessed– _Leia?–_ brusque rush visible in the freezing gaslit dim. _Leia. Can I see you ho–_

If one meant to avoid Han Solo _and_ one's thoughts, the best thing to do was attend a social.

But. Leia looked down at her dress. Her second-best, faded with laundering. Her actual best a funereal black taffeta. She would not go gooseberry to a party, Leia muttered, _and_ look a widow.

"I'll buy you a dress," Luke said, graciously accepting a stick of rock candy from the charmed Mary.

A ready-made frock? This was extravagance, such that Leia laughed aloud. But Luke was already perusing the shop's few finished dresses. Leia was tempted; she hadn't had store-bought clothing since Breha and Bail wed, when Leia was nine. And she knew Luke, there were no strings attached to his offer. But she could not accept. Luke shrugged, went on browsing.

Leia should have known refusal came too easily. Luke turned back to her, his smile cherubic, holding a book of the tissue-paper patterns. _Just in from New York City,_ Mary added proudly. Smiling around his candy, Luke drummed his fingers on stacked bolts of silk. Leia rolled her eyes. Then cocked her head. Perhaps she _would_ take that voucher.

XXXXXXXXX

Outside, she felt it, as she and Luke crossed the street. Not a sickness, too sweet for that, but it dizzied Leia to know it persisted. This signal indecently low in her middle– quivering buzz. She did not wish to look, but Leia's gaze slanted up. And there on the livery bench, knees wide around tangled reins, he was. Han Solo, stock-still and staring, length of leather wound over the spool of his shoulder.

Leia almost went to him. Almost ran to Han as she had dreaming, when she heard him calling from below. When she found herself running in nightdress, on her bare toes to be lifted into laughing, moonlit kiss. Into reunion so craved Leia's sleeping self demanded no explanation– how she got downstairs, why they'd been apart. The sacrifice of history, even of forgiveness, to the desperate wish of the heart.

But this was daylight. This was the harsh noontime of Silver Street, where Han Solo broke horses, hearts, promises. And so Leia pulled Luke into a hard, very public kiss. Luke, the actor, understood at once– when Leia let him go, his blue eyes were gently bemused, if shot through with some concern. Luke turned a quick look on the audience: the strapping fellow above, his scarred face lowering like thunder.

Leia raised her chin to Han. Watched his brow crease, tilted lips fall open– wounded, sneering, or seeking speech?– she would have once known by touch. But now, it was enough to have scribbled something on the blank sheet of Han's face _._ And seeing that, Leia turned her back, walked beyond the sphere of reach.


	7. Paper 3

Hands on the hips of her pantalets, Leia stared at the finished dress on the headless form. Daring in its severity: no voluminous arms, no heavy bustle. No decorative burden whatsoever. Just clean blue bodice into high neck, sleeves snug from shoulders to wrists, skirt too soft for undernets. The last two weeks, pinning filmy pattern pieces to muslin, Leia had doubted her calculations. Repeatedly paused, scissors in hand, to frown over the instructions. But there was no mistake: the design was so faithful to the figure that it allowed no corsetry.

Leia was tied in at twelve, when her bosom developed; this was a physical shock despite all her stolen peeks at Breha's biology texts. She associated the constriction with her new life in Whiskey Knot. _You'll get used to it_ , came Rouge's typically brisk prescription, _think of it as armor!_ But the corset felt punitive, nothing like the cardboard plating Leia wore to play King Arthur.

She looked from the dress down at her own bare chest. Leia had never been timid, but she wondered: had she the mettle to go unbound _and_ unescorted to a large event? She'd gone alone to the Christmas social, but that was informal, and herself yet untainted by scandal. _This_ was a level of freedom that felt impossible here, especially for her, especially after–

Sometimes Leia was ambushed by the sight of herself as though from outside. Saw herself as Han Solo must have, that afternoon in the water. When she'd shrugged down one shoulder of her thin underlay—it was soaked transparent anyway—and watched, with a tender impatience, as Han reached as though in a dream to brush down the other. Watched him stare and swallow and almost falter. She'd felt dizzying pride and liberation then, to be bare and beheld by him as though she was some world wonder.

Now Leia staved off the pain of this memory with cynicism. Han had been some actor. A challenge even to Luke Skywalker. However had he faked that stunned expression? That vulnerable hunger in his eyes, the shift in color from green to amber? She shook her head with a brittle chuckle that sounded manufactured even to her. She'd been—what was it her classmates used to call the gullible ones of their number? That's what she was. An all-day sucker.

But not forever. Leia took a breath, defiance girding her character. Whiskey Knot left her alone when it came to expenses, exile. Yet it wanted sway over her shape? Leia wished it wasn't Han's voice that came to her mind in answer: _Nope._ Her salved lips compressed, she wound her bosom in sheer gauze and buttoned herself into the blue dress. And in the looking-glass Leia stared at her flushed cheeks, at her natural breasts rising and falling on natural breath. She felt both pleased with and justified in the final effect. The formfitting simplicity of the dress became her.

She heard the hansom clatter at her gate. Luke pre-paid the cab to take her to Bright Oaks, he'd told Leia via note hidden in the tea-caddy. _Now you_ _ **must**_ _go, L., or you'll feel a thief._ Leia had had to laugh at this insight.

Hurriedly Leia finished pinning her hair. Flung on her knitted-lace wrap, took up her tapestry handbag and stepped her good kidskin boots into crisp night. No time left to overthink.

XXXXXXXXX

Jane Solo had had a good day. Weak but clearer, cheerful, sitting up to her needlepoint. After her evening dose Jane rested, listening to her youngest son read from the _Saturday Evening Post_.

Han chose whimsical articles. No war, illness, natural disaster. When he ran out of stories he invented more. Tonight Han turned pages only for show as he told of a gang of raccoon stagecoach robbers terrorizing the Midwest. Jane, still lucid, slapped Han's wrist, calling him a fantasist.

"You never heard of Nocturnal Pete?" Han pointed fingers at his mother like a bandit's pistol, made a chittering animal noise between his teeth.

Jane was laughing softly, Han smiling, when Robert entered the room. Over each outstretched arm was slung a length of silk and a circlet of stiff, waxed paperboard.

"Cravat and collar. Navy or black?"

"Cravat and collar?" Han smirked, leaned his bedside chair back. "What's that, an alehouse for your fancy pals?"

"For a party?" Jane's green eyes were poignantly owlish without her spectacles.

"That's right, Ma. At Bright Oaks." Robert grinned at Han. "Pat's staying in with Ma."

Watching his brother with wary eyes, Han scraped the edge of the magazine along his chin. "So'm I."

"You're not, boy. Eileen Howard awaits you specifically."

"Eileen Howardc'n wait on the devil himself–"

"Han." Jane struggled to sit up. "I don't want you missing." A wincing gasp. "Missing the fun."

"Ma." Han thumped his chair level, face stricken. "Ma, lie _down_. C'mon–"

"Do go." Jane caught Han's hand as she sagged back. "Oh! I so miss– go, and you tell me all about it tomorrow."

For a beat Han was a small boy again, bored numb at some local dance– his neck raw-scrubbed, cowlicks combed flat. Pat reading a book, Robert chasing girls, Pop gruffly joking with fellow farmers. But Han's pang came to remember his mother– healthy, joyful, moving to the fiddle. Tonight, Jane thought she was freeing her son to some rare treat, a reprieve from harvest, from her illness. And Han could see the peace this belief gave her.

"Alright." He leaned to kiss her forehead. "Thanks, Ma."

Jane smiled, squeezed his hand, already mostly asleep.

Outside his mother's closed door, Han turned on Robert. "You–" He swallowed, too furious to curse. " _You._ "

Jauntily as St. Nick, Robert hung tie and collar on Han's pointing finger. With a hiss Han cracked his wrist, sending the silk and collar into Robert's chest.

XXXXXXXXX

Even _she_ couldn't march this far out, Han decided, dismounting and handing Fix to the Howard liveryman. And her leased mare was ancient, would be due back to live out her last at her home stable soon. Warily Han cast his eyes over the house, pillared and grand. Unsure why the idea of Leia stranded did not gratify him. Why her absence made the night loom longer.

Hell. He couldn't _want_ to see her. The last time had been goddamn torture. Watching Leia, his Leia, with that kid in the street. The one she called _Luke_. Wiry towhead bastard with his big hero hat, his stupid Boston postcards of asters, his–

His closeness to the woman who, had things gone to plan, would now be Han Solo's wife.

All this last year gone, sleeping rough on the plains, Han let the stars that canopied _their_ first kiss convince him they hid a chart: he would track Leia with it. Win her back. When he was drunk it was even worse because the constellations led him in reverse to that winter night, the freezing air and the warmth of her mouth. Part of Han had stayed there in the Christmas dream of it, the speed and the breath of relief one of them—both of them—gave, to find so much feeling returned. And when he saw Leia kiss someone else, Han watched his secret map to that moment immolate.

Over the last weeks working at Robert's scant harvest, though, Han's shrewd brain took over for his torched heart. He knew, with intimate agony, just how Leia Organa kissed. The fierce sweetness, the dare and exhilaration were not there in the strict, almost clock-timed touch of her mouth to this Luke's. She gripped his chin, but did not caress. Leia did not sink fingers into fair hair. The pair shared no dreamy pendulum swing of power; no soft exchange of yield and pressure. No whispers that could drive a man to–

And there was something else. Something Han couldn't articulate to himself but studied the image of, nonetheless. After Leia released him, that blond kid had given her, then Han, an odd look. Older than his years. Almost like…not fear, Luke Skywalker wasn't scared of him, even if Han was older and much larger, gun strapped to his thigh _and_ torching the world with his glare. It was like the look his father used to get when young Han was reckless, broke something. Pop wasn't the type to fetch the strap. He'd give an arch of woolly brow and growl, _Boy, better fix what you fucked up._

XXXXXXXXX

The Howard games room glowed with light from candelabras and the huge stone hearth. At center ceiling, crinkled paper chains radiated from a great puffed-crepe bloom. Fiddlers tuned up in the piano corner. Stilled in the wide doorway, taking this in, Leia felt a quavering of nerve. Men in frock coats, political cronies of Mayor Howard's, took in Leia's figure, her lack of escort, with genteel hunger. Female faces were no softer. Leia wasn't sure if she imagined or heard titillated whispers: _Hired girl. Solo. Last summer._

There wasnothing for it but advance or retreat. Leia lifted her chin, lifted her hem and stepped into the vast room, directly into the embrace of Constance Howard. The nasty atmosphere shrank before Constance's warmth. She squeezed Leia's hands.

"How lovely to see you, Leia, I am so ple–"

"Leia Organa!" Eileen glided to her elder sister's side. "This dress, _my_. Why Connie, isn't it…forward?"

Constance lifted the shoulders of her own modest gray dress. An unwilling center of attention even tonight, scholarly Constance was disinterested in fashion. It was Eileen wearing showy bridal white: the peau de soie, Leia noted, from the day with Han in Miller's shop. The cloth had become a creation as festooned as Leia's was spare, but not the wedding dress Leia had assumed.

And if Leia had been wrong about that, murmured some stubborn, unwelcome hope, could it be that–

"You clever-boots!" Eileen said. "I recall what a deft hand you were with the local mending."

Constance's hands tightened protectively on Leia's. Leia almost smiled to reassure the kindly bride— the day Eileen Howard's pettiness vexed her was the day Leia gave herself up as craven—but then something in the room tightened, pierced the atmosphere. Leia's belly gave its telltale thrum: thrill, warning? She was past telling.

Eyes on her again. On her, and whoever was behind–

" _Han,_ " Eileen said.

XXXXXXXXX

Han Solo was dressed in a peculiar mix of correct and careless. His white shirt was clean and pressed, but he wore no tie. And he was collarless, button-band opened to the notch at the base of his throat. He wore good trousers, but he'd strapped his gun-belt to one leg. His boots freshly blacked. Face shaved, thick hair uncombed. Cuffs linked tight to his strong wrists in a way Leia wished she didn't know maddened him like the wrong gut-cinch bedevils a horse.

Leia didn't mean to look at him. Told himself she wasn't, even—Han Solo was just a tall man in her field of vision, leaning there at his wall. Near the dartboard, where drunken town councilors tossed feathered missiles, Robert Solo red-faced in their raucous midst. But Han didn't play darts, didn't take liquor. Didn't eat, didn't speak, even to– Leia shuddered– his awful, pompous hypocrite of a brother. Han just leaned, shoulder braced against walnut paneling, arms crossed over broad expanse of chest. Utterly expressionless.

He'd quickly got his impassiveness back, Leia was sourly impressed to note. After the kiss with Luke on the street, and now after the flicker of– horror? that had flashed Han's eyes from gold to leaden when he recognized her at the door. Quickly he looked right over Leia's head, as though he did not see her. Leia was not sure if this was intentionally mean, or if Han simply did not remember that he'd once done this to tease her when she ran down River Bend Road in spring dawn to greet him. And for a heartbeat Leia wondered what Han would do if she retaliated now with what she'd done back then to tease him back: stepped up on his boots, flexed her toes. Pressed herself close to fit her parted lips to the space between his collarbones. And before she could quell this daring instinct Leia gave Han the tiniest flicker of her tongue, there, just to feel the shock crackle through his rangy frame. She received his shock, yes, and something else that made Han duck his head and catch Leia's chin. The kiss so insistent and deep and sudden that his hat tumbled to the dirt, was almost forgotten with all the fallen redbud blooms.

Hard to imagine it now, such heated tenderness on that stony face across the room. Leia wondered why Han bothered attend. He did not look comfortable with Robert and his politician friends—though Leia sharply reminded herself that they had more influence over Han than she'd ever have guessed.

And now Leia's cruel carousel of memory revealed Han's face, radiant with cold and nerves, after he caught her on that winter boardwalk. _Hell, you know_ _the reason I showed–_

Well. Tonight the reason was Eileen, of course.

Leia kept to her own wall. There was only so much social support Constance could provide, even if Leia's pride would let her accept it: this was her party, she was occupied. And no one else approached her to speak, to compare lives, even schoolmates Leia had liked; some shot her tentative smiles, but they observed the border of scandal. And other guests, now into ample free drink, regarded her with undisguised avidity. Leia did not respect or accept their judgment. Yet holding her spine straight against it took invisible vibrating effort.

Even bitterly estranged from him Leia did not want the same ugly attention for Han, yet she bristled on principle that he escaped it. If she was seen as some mixture of haughty and indecent in her lack of corset, then what was he? Standing sullen and solitary as a body could be, flaunting his own lack of prescribed attire—he wore his _gun!—_ putting a hand throughhis unruly hair. But there were no hisses of _last summer_ for Han Solo, no shock at his return, when the scandal was equally his. No: in fact, _he_ was the prize! If anything, tonight's hissed gossip raised his value, as though the hired girl had supplied some necessary masculine test. And now Han was back home, he'd passed. Both beguiled and renounced the girl of the inferior class. Somehow this had trial had corrupted her but seasoned him, made him fit to win a wife.

In Han's orbit, Eileen Howard collected her own attention, though hers was approving. Appropriately breathless in her obvious bindings, appropriately untouched in white silk, Eileen kept a modest blush to her cheek. Cast her fair lashes down whenever anyone meaningfully looked at the tall leaning man and teased her _we'll be at_ _your wedding next, young lady._

XXXXXXXXX

Han's instinctive thought when he saw Leia was disloyal to his own cause. _Give 'em hell, Sweetheart._

He knew what guts it took, for Leia to show up here. To face the inevitable stares and whispers. He got them too, the first week he'd been back. Women embroidered the story with words like _secret, cad, spoiled,_ but the looks Han got from men were envious. Admiring, even, as though Leia Organa was in some category with Fix, a rebellious creature he'd tamed in the street.

Yeah, people talked in Han's wake, but never to his face. The several men who disliked Han Solo enough to pry into his conquest/disgrace kept their curiosity to a distance—the youngest Solo was handy with his fists. And Han had never been a man for friends; since boyhood he'd been put off by how Robert knew everyone, maintained kinships with people that seemed to Han as slick and superficial as the coat of oil on a cast-iron pan. Han liked horses, he liked Ma and Pat, and that was more or less enough until he met Leia herself.

And then it was like something in him cracked—all those cowboys would be so stunned to hear that if anyone got broke, it was _Han._

Still, Han was no fool: he knew damn well how clear it was that something had gone on between him and Leia, give or take the actual truth. And everything from scripture to the shiner he'd seen on a female bartender somewhere in Denver told him that men and women held different cards from birth. All the shame of the last scene between him and Leia had been neatly assigned to her. All the daring and heat and freedom? His. Han knew it, she was bullwhip-smart and she did too. Yet here Leia was despite them, slim and lethal as an arrow in this impossible dress.

Han could have stood in the doorway all night, staring at Leia. At how beautiful she was, how rosy and alive. Her wonderful eyes on him too, so deep and drawing Han looked away, over her head, to preserve what was left of himself. Said a terse hello to the bride and moved across the room. He didn't want to be close when Leia's escort returned to her side, cheery blond Luke in—what, some ruffled shirt, stepping close with a glass of champagne punch for _his_ girl.

But as the night unfolded Han noticed Leia was unescorted. She kept to her own wall. Stood alone all in blue, tendrils of her heavy hair working loose. Slow, now, but threatening to tumble into auburn waves. Han knew he should not watch her. Knew that seeing that hair fall one more time might kill him. Yet Han could not stand to miss it. He'd been so long without Leia that his eyes were greedy on her; his hands that knew that hair, knew that shape, twitched so that he hooked them in his belt.

XXXXXXXXX

It was the groom who breached the social divide. Perhaps it was encouragement from his kind bride; perhaps that he himself was kind; perhaps because he was from Limerick in a town where _No Irish_ placards were not uncommon. Whatever the reasons, when Mayor Howard announced the start of the dancing with Bridegroom's Choice– the groom could select any unwed female partner– Jack Broderick crossed the cleared floor and offered himself to Leia Organa.

This was strong endorsement, meant to introduce a fine young maiden suitable for marriage. Like a livestock auction, Breha had once said with a short sigh, and for a moment Leia wondered if asking her was some perverse jest. Or perhaps the newcomer simply did not know the local rumors. But this was a man decent enough for Constance, and the intelligence in Jack's eyes said he knew exactly what he was doing. Yet there was no prohibitive pity in his thin face.

Leia _was_ here, she told herself; she had come this far, why should she not dance? She liked to dance. Had learned at faculty events in Boston as a girl, attending with her widowed father. And so, in spite of the ire and surprise rising in the room, especially from Eileen's sector—Eileen so sure she'd be selected as the jewel of the night—that Leia placed her hand in Jack's and moved onto the cleared parquet.

This dance changed the tenor of the evening. When Leia came off the floor, surprised at the stamina afforded by lack of corset, she found her dance card scrawled with names—many of them ex-classmates, young men who had been too cowed to approach when Leia was exiled at the beginning of the night. Leia smiled wryly to herself, but did not mean to refuse them. They were nice enough and she knew how paralyzing social censure was to most.

And anyhow, the more time Leia spent on the floor, the less there was to consider Han Solo.

XXXXXXXXX

 _Yeah, this is_ _fine,_ Han thought with a snort. _Real great night._ He'd been helpless to stop staring at Leia when she was in the corner; now here she was right before his eyes in the midst of the dancers, floating like a petal to fiddles and pedals. With a series of partners, each man respectable in tie and collar, each a thousand times more suitable for her. But it wasn't jealousy Han felt, not this time. Even to see Leia glowing, smiling, gliding. Speaking clever and generous things that made her awkward partners surer of themselves. No, it wasn't jealousy Han felt, though the sight of her in strange arms burned; it was mostly admiration. Longing. Even an awful, lonely kind of relief. To see Leia happy was, Han realized with faint disbelief, something he wanted even at his own sufferance. The last time he'd seen her, she'd been so—

Han cursed his stubborn heart. It had adhered to Leia Organa and would not now come unstuck, a shipping label on something lost. Bleakly he imagined the story he'd have to spin tomorrow for his Ma, awaiting tales of fun. He could hardly say, _Hey_ _Ma. Remember the girl you liked so much? The girl who—remember the only time you slapped my face? Nah, me either._

He tried looking away from the pretty girl in blue. But there was Eileen Howard, perched on an armchair surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, staring at him with telegraphed hurt that was actually fury. Clutching the pastel tissue-paper bouquet she'd caught. No, Han had not asked her to dance, no matter Robert's slurred instructions. Nor would he. Hell, was he supposed to feel sorry? Eileen had men lined up across the room waiting to sign her card. Just not him. Well. Life was rough.

Daniel Townsend approached from the bureau where the ladies' dance cards were arranged. Bragging around the cigar in his teeth that he'd signed his name to all of them. He looped an arm around Robert's neck. The two were schoolfriends; Han hated Townsend. Even when Han was a boy he was a creep, the type to throw rocks at barn-cats. Just simple mean.

Townsend hooked his fingers into Robert's collar. There was a rip. "What is this...cardboard? Oh, oh: this is terrible, Solo. Cheap. Let me take you to my tailor, get you a—"

Robert cut his eyes to Han with a sort of shame. A determined laugh that made Han look away. The only place to look, back the dance floor—and the girl moving by, Leia again. Figured.

"The Organa girl," Daniel mused. "Here by her lonesome." He whistled, eyeing the slender form. "You reckon she'll need a lift home?"

A chill seized Han. A surge of wrath so strong it locked his jaw. His mother had said that Rouge was dead but with Leia gone this had seemed of little consequence. Now Han kicked himself—of course this meant Leia was out on River Bend alone.

Robert laughed uncomfortably. "You're wedded."

"I didn't mean I'd take her to _my_ home." Daniel gave Robert a quick, fraternal slap to the cheek.

Han pushed off the wall. Daniel's eyes moved to him. Still unable to speak, Han rested his hand bluntly on the butt of his pistol.

XXXXXXXXX

When Leia returned from her latest dance, she was breathing hard. She went to check her dance card, hoping to fit in a pause; Constance had offered to show her the library. But her folded booklet was missing from the ranks lined up in alphabetical order on the walnut bureau, next to the ivory inkwell and pen. Leia checked the _Os_ again—here were Felicity Oberwell and Tess Osgood, but no _Organa_ card where it should be, where she'd left it.

At first Leia believed that her dance card had been culled from the rest. Pulled, discarded. It made an ugly sort of sense: Leia had been invited at Constance's insistence but was not permitted to belong, certainly not to the same category of femininity, availability and choice as Eileen. But then Leia's eye fell on her handbag. She'd left it tucked on a shelf, but now it was hooked by its bone handles on the back-spool of a chair dragged to where she'd been standing. A corner of parchment poked from the lip of the tapestry fabric.

It was with strangely pounding heart that Leia crossed the floor and pulled the dance card from her bag. Stood close to the candlestick to read. Under the list of names a message was smeared, not with incompetence or illiteracy but as though the writer's intent was too urgent for his penmanship. A stroke so driven into the creamy stock that it collected rivulets of candlelight. Fire reflected from slick black so the words burned like a brand: _Let me see you home._

Leia looked up. Across the room Han Solo held her eyes, held out his arm. Even in the dim Leia could see his broadloom sleeve was streaked with ink. His eyes intense and amber as his hot script and fixed to hers, Han deliberately unbuttoned and rolled up his blotted cuff, revealing his bare corded forearm beneath.


	8. Leather 1

Leia's cheeks cooled and she moved, soft skirt illustrating her control, to the open hearth. Turning to look at Han, Leia smiled. Calmly folded her dance card into a tight square and fed it, like some thoughtless feed-pellet, into the greedy gullet of the fire. There was no wrath. She was lively and cool as a breeze. As she did it, she held his eyes right back.

Han made a sound. Not forced, not to mock her; it broke naturally from his chest, a single bark of harsh laughter. Surprised himself. What did he like best? Ah, no point in denial, Han loved it all: the combative tilt to Leia's head, the spirited rise and fall of her breath. The stylish disregard of her fingertips splayed close to the flames. Han knew her to be brave, willful, but this was a new side. Leia Organa was tough as hide under all that delicate loveliness.

And deny it _she_ might, but at his laugh Han saw Leia's eyes flash her own intrigue. She'd clearly expected Han to crack, stalk off, her little kidskin boot squarely planted in his pride. But Han had an ace in his ink-stained sleeve. He knew what was in Leia's purse.

When he put the dance card in her bag, Han recognized the round tin inside by touch. He'd fidgeted with it enough, that week it lived in his pocket after he plucked it, on a whim, from the chemist's shelves. Pale blue tin embossed with a pink blossom and the slogan _Sweetheart Rose Salve._ He'd hoped the pretty trifle would please Leia, maybe even signal his feelings, without revealing too much of the way she moved in his private mind—that Han noticed her mouth. A lot. As she worked, as she rode alongside him in the cart, Leia bit her lips in thought, some sensual expression of her intellect. Now Han pulled the lidded disc from the chamois lining of Leia's purse. Enamel scraped, some, but the same tin he'd given her, all right: dented at the center of the rose by his fussing thumb. Its weight, though, was insubstantial, and with this lightness rose Han's heart, his hopes. If Leia so hated him, would she keep some near-empty memento?

Without a backward look, Leia went off on Constance Howard's arm. And slowly Han smiled after her. Leia's response to his note was one thing; her kissing a stranger another. But this pose that Han Solo was no one to her, some upstart stranger, a pretender to be dismissed—forgotten? Nope.

 _That's not what it says on the tin...Sweetheart._

XXXXXXXXX

Leia knew herself to be a prideful creature. Felt no shame in that sin, not that she did for any of the others she'd indulged in. Pride had cured her in both senses of the word. Toughened her; revived her; kept her alive, would again. Had seen her through this party tonight. So Leia showed nothing of her rising anxiety as she stepped onto the Howards' huge porch and took in the situation.

There were too few cabs for the departing guests, and no guarantee when even her prepaid one would return. She may, the last driver told her before he departed with his passengers, be waiting until after two. Leia drew her shawl close against the midnight chill. She could not beg a ride. Nor a bed for the night from the Howards, never, never. She was far from River Bend, but Leia could not hover here, either, among laughing couples and groups like some pitiful ghost. She felt a pang that she swiftly crushed, thinking of how, when she'd returned from Constance's tour of the library, Han was gone. She knew she shouldn't have been surprised he hadn't cared enough to stay. But Leia wished now that she'd accepted his—offer, demand, dare? Not for the ride so much as she—

She'd _liked_ that new, searing light in Han's eyes. Had the feeling she'd showed her own, burning her card. The uncomfortable, crackling verve of this thought set Leia in motion. She set her chin and moved down the sweeping stairs, fine boots providing meager shield against the sharp pebbles of the driveway. Without a plan Leia walked into giant, lonely night, lit by a bright moon through frayed clouds.

Down the curve of the drive, Leia stopped short in the crushed rock. A rider sat high on a huge horse grazing the grassy rise. Hatless in his battered roughout jacket, Han Solo smiled mildly down at her. Leia felt a surge of excitement that left her furious—with him, with herself.

"Why are you still here?"

Han shrugged, serenely, at the stars. "You know Fix," he said. "Life of the party."

Leia resumed walking. With a press of knee Han had Fixing ambling alongside her. They travelled like this in silence for a good five minutes. Increasingly piqued by Han's elaborate relaxation, Leia wrapped her arms tighter around herself, under her lacy shawl that did nothing to prevent the September chill.

"This is how you meant to see me home?" Leia said, at last.

"Beg pardon?" Han's deep voice was so neutral it could be bored.

"You brought no cart. Did you mean," she said with exaggerated clarity, "to walk beside me to River Bend?"

His face remained still, but Leia heard the creak of cowhide as Han adjusted in the saddle. Adjusted around, Leia knew, a ghost of herself—around her strategic invocation of how closely they'd once ridden. Around the question of whether such position would be refused now. All leading toward admission of what underpinned Han's whim to escort her.

"Well now." Opting to take the offensive over explanation, Han waved a hand at Leia's thin wrap, the wavering of her heeled dress boots in deep gravel. "Can't all be as well-prepared as y—"

They rounded the last bend to the main road where, perpendicular to the mouth of the driveway, sat a private carriage. Some instinct stopped Leia's stride. Suddenly Han was on his boots beside her, reins looped about his wrist. The hackney's door opened; Fixing flared his nostrils at the cigar and whiskey fumes. The crowded carriage was loud with raucous male laughter, illuminated by lanterns swinging from the four corners of the roof. Leia recognized the man leaning out the door as Daniel Townsend. Squeezed beside him, his head rather childishly on Daniel's shoulder, was the unconscious Robert Solo.

"Evening, Miss Organa," Townsend said, with sly courtliness. "Would you like a ride?"

"No." Leia said.

"Look at you." Townsend _did_ look at her, too long. "It's warm in here."

Other faces, eyes, peered from the mouth of the hack. Eyes from the party. Eyes like, Leia thought with a bitter twist of her gut, coyotes encroaching on a dying fire.

Keeping his own eyes hard on the men, Han bent slightly beside her, laced his fingers together. Leia thumbed open her bag and fit the sharp metal clasp to the well-sewn sideseam of her dress, swiftly cutting a slit. Her movement deftly freeing her leg to the thigh-band holding up her stocking. Han could not help his impressed half-grin up at Leia—and Leia's own lips quirked as she stepped neatly into the hammock of Han's hands and, with his smooth boost, swung herself astride the horse. Fix giving a happy shiver of welcome as she stroked her fingers into his mane.

Leia _had_ always hated side-saddle, Han remembered. Said she wasn't a damned mermaid—a declaration that had made him laugh out loud on a quilt in the Solo hayfield. That small cleared portion where they'd hidden, of a summer evening, a tiny chamber all to themselves. Gold walls, washed violet ceiling, long conversations. On the tail of his laughter Han had seized his nerve, suddenly about to ask her. Fingers slipping around the ring in his pocket, secured to his beltloop with a rawhide cord—cinched there with a knot, from his trusty boyhood book, for security yes but also for luck: Han tied the true love knot. He'd been carrying the thing around for weeks just like he once had the stupid tin of salve. But Han had only just murmured "Leia...?" when she, with a secret smile, slung her leg across him and sat in his lap. Straddled him as she would a horse, if she were not constrained to the prim nonsense of sidesaddle. Making Han's lips fall open, his eyelids flutter, his throat seal off. _Allow me to illustrate the realities of the female shape,_ Leia said. God, that afternoon. It had gone far, farther than he'd have thought possible fully clothed. The farthest before the day in the water, a week later. That sweet August afternoon, everything gold, if only Han had _asked_ instead of kissed, and kissed, and kissed—

 _True love knot. Jesus, what a goddamn sap._ No time for these thoughts, Han's boot was in the stirrup and he was up. Leia slid forward to let him settle in the seat, fitting herself between Han and the pommel. A long arm curved around her to take the reins.

"You can't mean to ride _with_ him," Daniel was angry and aghast, suddenly some drunken moral policeman. "Not with _Solo._ Not aga—"

Leia turned her eyes on the men with regal scorn that undercut her provocative pose, her torn dress. The tight press of her back, bottom and hips to Han's chest, waist, every damn part else. Despite all that was publicly and privately known, all that had come before, neither Leia nor Han assumed self-conscious posture before their audience. Theirs was a tableau that looked defiantly like mutual possession: of self, of one another.

Han's free hand pulled back his coat to the supple holster strapped to his thigh. With a snap of thumb as fast as Leia's had been, the revolver was in Han's grip and aimed. Liquor-flush draining from his cheeks, Daniel Townsend flinched from the flint-eyed man he had, until this instant, thought of as Bob's screwup kid brother.

"You didn't take my meaning, before," Han said, almost pleasantly. "How 'bout now?"

"Yes," Townsend croaked, as white and nodding as a daisy. "Yes, Han, I underst—"

Han's gun was back in its holster as fast as it had left. He whistled to Fix just as he felt, between his own legs, Leia instinctively squeeze her thighs to powerful flanks. Fix exploded as though with some new force Han and Leia had created between themselves. Leia's head was driven to Han's shoulder with the power, and protectively Han moved around her. His left hand wrapped in the reins, and Han's right gripped the fine-grained horn of the pommel just at Leia's hips, rigidly bracketing her with his forearms, thighs.

Fix flew past the hackney to the main road, thundering along a path set by the moon. Leia made a wild, elated sound, turning from the blast of air. Her cheek pressed to Han's chest, between the sides of the open coat that Han hoped warmed her. Her head fit just so under his chin and he couldn't help but gently stroke his jaw along her crown. Her hair scented just how Han remembered, of the herbs she washed it with—rosehips, lavender. And when that glorious hair finally unravelled, lashing around him, Han shut his eyes against the windblown burn of tears. He would not think of the last time they rode like this. Not return to a memory so painful that, Han hoped, the burden of it was only his. No. He would be here now in this cleansing slipstream, Leia returned however briefly to his arms.

XXXXXXXXX

Eventually Han had to slow Fix from gallop to trot, calming with knee and hum. Not far from River Bend Road, he dropped Fix again to walk. The quieter gait, the approach of the old house, seemed to wake Leia from her nestle at Han's chest, seemed to roust Han from his shelter in her hair. As Han pulled them to a stop at her gate, Leia hitched away from him, and something in her hair viciously gouged Han's underjaw. He jerked, gave a grunt of pain.

"Whaddaya got in there? A bayonet?" Han muttered it, but there was a tremor in his tone.

"I'm." Leia swallowed the shaking of her own voice. She clamped her legs to Fix for balance as her hands went to her hair: to her a snarled disaster, to Han so excruciatingly sexy he didn't allow himself to look. She said, "It's a pen nib."

" _Pen_ —"

"I ran out of hairpins." Leia's practised fingers withdrew the long, sharp nib from her hair, slipping it into the purse looped on her wrist. "Luke's cab arrived, and I had no time to find—"

Han stiffened against her. Abruptly swung himself to the ground. Leia's back felt suddenly cold. "Where was Luke's cab just now?" That lazy, distant tone back to his voice.

Leia's hands clenched in her hair. He did not get to act both detached _and_ jealous. "Thank you for the ride, Han. I apologize for the inconvenience to you," she said, each word icily enunciated.

Sluicing sweat from Fix's neck with the blade of his hand, Han hissed a frustrated breath. "It's my—" In the moonlight she saw his jaw work.

Leia winced, though mercifully Han was looking at Fix and didn't see it. Was he about to say _it's my fault?_ And now she thought of what Han had said to Daniel Townsend: _You didn't take my meaning, before._ Obviously the odious local politician had expressed, in Han's hearing, that Leia was outside the category of people he was required to treat with bare respect. Leia pictured those clustered scavenger eyes on her, and turned her eyes to her upstairs window, under which she kept her rifle. She was not afraid; she'd plug any of those pigs before they finished opening her gate. Not that Han knew that—over their time together, the subject of shooting had never come up.

"Listen. I'm real sorry those assh—uh, gave you trouble. Won't again, I promise you."

She set her back teeth. _Real sorry._ It wasn't rescue or apology Leia wanted, not what she'd expected from Han's written request, from the heat in his eyes when he unbuttoned that sleeve from his wrist. Not what her body had tentatively believed this ride was. It hurt to know that Han hadn't set out to see her home because he shared Leia's yearning, or her attraction to whatever treacherous, compelling energy had risen in the place of their past trust. He had simply felt responsible for how this humorless, philistine, ugly town saw her now as sexual fair game. Han felt he had damaged her working-class but chaste name, her reputation. This ride was reparation, no more, no less.

Han reached to lift Leia to the ground. Wordlessly she accepted. His forearms, so recently bared to her, so recently barring her hard in place, trembled with the effort of keeping her at arm's length. He set her to the ground with the delicacy and distance that would have suited a porcelain doll—that _he'd_ cracked.

He was so faultlessly correct that for a pained flash Leia saw an earlier Han's earnest face the fifth evening he drove her home from the Solo farm. He'd offered her candy. Penny candy transported from the paper bag Leia knew it was sold in at Miller's to a little buckskin pouch that looked like he'd made it as a boy, clumsy with whipstitch. When Leia thanked him, selecting a butterscotch disc, Han blurted he hadn't bought it special or nothing, kept candy in the gig. He loved the stuff. She raised her eyebrows when Han crammed a paw into the bag and wolfed a handful of mingled candies at once—licorice and peppermint and horehound and caramel and sassafras—which must have tasted _awful_. Han was jittery with sugar as he got out of the gig to hang the leather storm curtains against the sudden blustering rain, dropping them to the mud, swearing, then apologizing for swearing, then swearing again as his hat blew off. How red Han had turned the next breakfast shift when Jane Solo told Leia not to bother pouring syrup on his pancakes: Han had hated sweets since he was a little boy. In fact, every October fourth, Jane said with a fond roll of her eyes, Han asked for potato chips instead of birthday cake.

Now Han gave Leia a ghastly smile, formal and stiff. Horribly symmetrical. From so high above her, it felt like a pat on the head.

Oh, God. _His pity._ It was intolerable, this reassurance of Han's social esteem. Leia would have almost preferred Han smirked and carnally propositioned her now, himself—acted on what she'd seen as raw lust in his eyes tonight, when she burned her card. Lust she could admit, in this moonlit moment, that she had felt herself when he rolled up his sleeve. There was no pity in lust, at least.

And Leia thought of the ride they'd just shared. How the speed was so great, the air so flaying that she turned her face from it, closed her eyes, helplessly pressed her cheek to Han's chest. How, her hair flying loose, Leia heard herself cry something indefinable. Suddenly the notion of being alone was a crushing burden; Leia did not want to wake tonight into the want she'd often had, in the dark in her Boston bed. Han in her mind then but Leia could not sense him in her own touch and she could not quite reach it, coax or drive herself to it, the reward promised by her dreaming of him. She did not want to wake tonight into that feeling, find herself aching to the meter of Han's heartbeat. Wake hot with the thought of his body held hard to hers, that lean, ink-marked forearm tight, his hand clenched at the pommel, close—

 _Fast._ This biologist's daughter knew that sex was honest. For a reckless second Leia almost considered putting the offer to Han, blunt and bold. _Come inside._ Just to exorcise that exciting horse-taming stranger, tipping his hat to her; kill off that flustered young man in the rain, shirt plastered to his chest, wrestling those storm curtains. Kill her persistent affection for him at last. Let her put the sweet lie of their history to rest.

But Han was already moving away, hot-walking Fix like a huge dog on a leash. "Just gonna cool 'im off. Down the road, up and back. Be on my way soon enough."

So Leia shrugged like it was nothing, it was all nothing. It had never been anything—not the past, not tonight. Her voice was crystalline and precise when Leia said _thank you_ and turned from him. Striding up her path, spilling her hair back over one shoulder, Leia missed the way Han Solo looked after her, eyes shading green with pained want. How his throat worked. How, as he walked, Han tracked the lamp that winked on in Leia's upstairs bedroom, turning her curtains pink. He walked Fixing until it went out.

XXXXXXXX

Yawning, Leia moved through the dawn meadow, in her flowered wrap and Rouge's too-big pigskin galoshes, to the lean-to where Aldera slept. Still drowsy from her late night, Leia was surprised to find the elderly mare already turned out from her stall, happily munching clover. Stroking Aldera's neck, Leia whispered to her: _Naughty thing. How did you get out?_ The little roan used to escape years ago, but she had been docile in her dotage. Leia sighed. She could not in good conscience keep Aldera much longer. It was not fair. She'd been selfish hanging onto Aldera's company as long as she had. It would soon be cold, and Leia could not keep the lean-to repaired. But Leia loved the creature, had learned to ride on her. Read books on her back, napped in this meadow against the gentle horse's belly. Leia did not want to see the mare back at her adequate but impersonal leasing stable.

Feeding the old horse a sugar cube, Leia rubbed the velvety blaze on Aldera's muzzle and headed for the lean-to to prepare feed and muck out the stall. But at the mouth of the small space, Leia paused. Frowned. Had Aldera spent the full night in the meadow? No, that couldn't have been, Leia would have seen her when she came home. Yet her stall was scrupulously clean, filled with sweet-smelling straw. Her water changed, still cool from the pump. The last traces of a fresh bran mash lining the trough.

Arms twined around herself, Leia waded back through the long grass, around the old house to the front porch. She wasn't sure what she expected to find, yet Leia was curiously bereft to see no one there. No big gray-white horse; no sandy-headed man asleep in the cradle of his upturned saddle, under the rough suede nap of his coat. No evidence of Han Solo at all.

 _But, Lelila: look closer,_ Leia thought in the voice of her scientist father. She stared at the porch swing. On the peeling white paint of the armrest, streaks of stark leather-blacking—as though someone had braced his large, polished boots there. The seat was not long enough for a tall man to stretch out on, but it would do if he had no intention of sleeping. And in the coral, windless morning, the empty seat was still gently swaying.


	9. Leather 2

When Leia asked to go to the Whiskey Knot Fall Fair, Rouge snorted. Gestured at the canning pot seething on the cast-iron stove, preserving the garden yield that would see them through winter. At the kitchen table spread with needlework-for-hire. _You think we do this for prizes?_

Stung, Leia bit her tongue, stabbed at her mending. She knew Rouge loved her, knew why Rouge's scoff was oblique refusal of the request. But Leia had no desire to contest her domestic skills against those of other local girls approaching marriageability. Winning a ribbon in the maidens' age-bracket for, say, jam or pastry was considered sure strategy to an engagement. But far from being flattered like Betsy Armstrong was when she discovered her boardwalk nickname was _Busty_ , Leia shuddered at such attention.

Gone sixteen in August, Leia was heckled on the street by coarser men, eyeballed at church by the pious. When Breha visited from Boston she was asked, by bachelors twice Leia's age, when her daughter would be ready to make a match. And in September Rouge chased a cattle rancher off her porch with a hatchet. Weeding the garden unseen, Leia heard the man offer free beef in exchange for the girl as his wife _._ She choked on laughter that was part horror, part anger. Watching her suitor flee Rouge's wrath, clutching his showy white doeskin hat, Leia had the perverse urge to shout after him: what _was_ her worth in meat? She'd never seen him in her life, and the thought that he'd culled her from some feminine herd was...what on _earth_ did men believe they were owed? An automaton that cooked, did the wash, gave birth?

Breha calmly explained the reproductive process when Leia began her cycle, but the curious girl had long been secretly reading her stepmother's books. By sixteen Leia understood why Rouge cultivated Queen Anne's Lace, why town women skulked to River Bend for the seeds. Rouge took the money they offered; when Breha was home, she measured preventative doses for free. It was not from any text, though, but from kneading and needles, from hoisting wet laundry, from scouring, cooking and gardening that Leia perceived another female truth. Certain seeds prevented conception, yes. But nothing—not illness, not menses, not sex, not being with child and not childbed itself— _nothing_ staunched the tide of work.

Which made marriage not a covenant of love, as Leia read of in novels and verse, but servitude. With the added level of what vile Reverend Blair declared _wifely devoir_. No, young Leia thought, lying awake under the wedding-ring quilt, she did not wish to advertise herself. All she'd wanted at the fair was—oh, what? A day off from Breha's studies, from Rouge's chores. Reprieve. A small freedom, however brief.

Leia turned her face to her pillow to muffle tears, her stubborn defences eroded by fatigue. She was exhausted, yet bed represented not rest but still more labor: the quilt Meredith had stitched from old dresses and aprons, the sheets and nightdress Leia scrubbed in scalding water, the feather pallet she dragged outside and thrashed. Bed was a place to be begotten, born, die. To weep in if alone and submit in if wedded; to rise from in the pre-dawn dark regardless, to face the day, to face the work. But bed was not, it lately seemed, somewhere she could simply sleep.

XXXXXXXXX

It was in a solitary night kitchen, these years later, that Leia saw the notice in the local paper. The fall fair fell tomorrow, the third of October. The date so close to Han Solo's birthday that Leia pushed away her chamomile tea in frustration. What use to her, this reminder of him? What use this mental picture of the compass in its pebbled case Leia had been saving for last summer?

The prospector's compass cost nearly five dollars. But it was so lovely, Leia had marvelled to Mary, who cheerfully retrieved it from high shelving whenever Leia ran errands at Miller's. Sterling silver. Pewter needle swivelling like rays around the windrose etched at its center. A pleasingly heavy device, with miniature magnifying lens to spy treasure, a clever retractable hook to latch onto the gunbelt that occupied far too much of Leia's imagination. Leia took extra mending to afford the gift, hid her hoarded bills in her father's wallet, and that in the pocket of her pinafore. She'd felt guilty concealing income from Rouge, especially with her aunt under the weather. Though this wasn't Leia's biggest secret—God, she was so happy then. Perpetually thrilled, so giddily, gullibly in love that she laughed aloud at Eileen Howard's pitying smile as they passed on the street, Leia's arms full of hotel linens.

 _Leia_ had pitied _Eileen_. Leia pitied everyone lacking her experience of Han Solo the evening before, parked in the gig along the river, past the railroad tracks. Fix unhitched and grazing beneath the raincover of serviceberry trees. Han's beautiful gravel voice describing creeks and caves, adventures with his friends. His animated face, big hands illustrating enthusiasms hidden from everyone else. And Han listened, too, to Leia's interests. He didn't grow restless when Leia spoke of her longing for coastlines. Most people in Whiskey Knot were regionally chauvinistic, as though to have seen—to have even _dreamed_ of—anything past township limits was pretentious.

Leia meant to tell Han about the scholarship, waiting for her in the fall at Breha's college. He loved to travel; she'd summon the gumption to invite him to Boston (perhaps, she archly thought, a handsome man could be obtained with free beef). She'd ask Han if he could see himself in the East, at least for a little while. Luke would help them find quarters that wouldn't look too closely for a ring on her finger, and Breha wasn't Rouge: she wouldn't interfere so long as Leia was prudent with her grades. With calendar dates, with Queen Anne's Lace. And as Leia stitched, the image of Han bare and rumpled-haired and, oh, gasp-laughing up at her in some shared bed came to her, bidden or not. His tight grip at her own honest hips. She squeezed her eyes shut against the wave of tenderness, humor, heat. The disbelief that she was so close to escape: a life with Han, far from here, aerated with freedom.

Yes, Leia meant to ask him every time they met. But there was a point, when they were alone, that words receded and they were drawn together. This time it was when Leia said she'd never been to the fair and Han vowed, _we'll go_. Linked his fingers with hers, looked at her as though he was saying something deeper. And the leather storm curtains afforded such warm seclusion, the rain rattling against the hides. A space where all was possible, permissible, right. Soon Han's hair was mussed from Leia's fingers, their lips full and red from kisses. His calloused left hand curved gently at Leia's cheekbone but there was craving in how the right spanned her back, flexed at her waist, over calico and corset and all the restrictive rest.

Male attire was easier to breach.

When Leia impulsively opened three buttons on his shirt, Han shuddered enough to break their kiss. Searched her face with his wide gold eyes. Leia was not timid, but she was finding that life did not precisely reflect all she'd read: life was not her suffrage tracts, not an anatomy text. In life all this closeness bore mystery, weight. Desire and restiveness existed in measure and Leia denied neither as she slipped her hand inside cotton, over Han's firm, singleted middle. Received his heaved breath, knew it for a _yes._ He hid his face in her braids; she hid her own face at Han's chest before she allowed her fingertips beneath his waistband of stiff-smooth chamois. To graze him through jersey, where he rose. Oh! He was so—

Han fell back into the patent seat like he'd been shot. His _Leia_ groaned shock; his _Sweetheart_ rough plea: go farther? Or cease? His lashes fluttered, he gripped her wrist. Leia didn't know what Han meant by this, didn't know herself what she would have done if the evening locomotive hadn't thundered past. Seven o'clock! They'd grown reckless, but there was ardent permanence in the kisses Han pressed to Leia's lace-bound neck when he left her. _G'night Princess._ He was hers. Leia was his, and Han was hers. _Mine,_ Leia exulted as she sewed, sitting up in bed, a coverlet at the bottom of her door to hide lamplight from Rouge. And so much more of him yet to discov—

Raindrops clattered at the open window above the kitchen table. Leia leapt up to push down the sash, horrified at the pull of reverie, seductive and terminal as the river's undertow. Looking over the dark meadow, Leia tightened her flannel wrap. Strange, how rain had once provided such sweet shelter, and now made her feel more alone than ever. It had blustered over a week; homebound, Leia hadn't seen Han since their shared ride. Since he... _had_ Han stayed the night? Every dragging, solitary second in this house, the more deluded the idea seemed.

Yet Leia kept expecting his knock.

 _Perhaps he's lost_. Leia hissed this viciously under her breath, a reminder that the precious compass had never been bought. Her modest savings spent instead on passage out of Whiskey Knot. The thing was shelved yet, gathering dust. Unless, of course, Eileen Howard had bought it, no thought to cost. Leia's lips twisted in what she told herself was a smile: who knew, after all, just how many women _had_ seen Han half-undone with want.

With a hard shake of her head, Leia flipped the page to check for response to her house advert. She had to sell, get out of town. For good. Let Han fade.

But, with typical contrariness, this was when he manifested himself. Not as she'd imagined him, leaning on her porch nonchalantly wet. No, he did not appear in the flesh, but the sketch was unmistakable nonetheless: crescent eyes and tilted smile. Left thumb brashly hitched in a suspender. Pushed-back hat, revolver strapped at quadricep, rifle braced against his shoulder. Han Solo was rendered above the caption _Will local hotshot reclaim his laurels?_

Han had never spoken of his renown as a marksman, though she supposed the ease with which he wore his holster was some declaration. But with the fairgrounds ten minutes' walk from River Bend, every autumn Leia heard staccato pops from the shooting contest. Airborne gunpowder stippling sheets even as she pinned them on the line. _Forget apple pie,_ she'd thought at sixteen; the skill Leia itched to test at the fair was her sniper's eye.

With her trigger finger, Leia traced Han's inked face. That smile, boastful-shy. God, she was tired of _missing_. Leia thought again of that rainy evening in the gig, their shared breath. Once, she had believed it trust. Now the memory was a dare: Han's likeness a test, meant just for her.

Who was this intimately familiar stranger?

Who was this woman who wanted to best him?

XXXXXXXXX

"Hey, Paddy."

Pat Solo glanced up from his newspaper. Han inclined his chin at the high board fence that kept fairgoers from blundering into the shooting grounds. To where Robert and his boyhood crony, Dan Townsend, blocked the only entrance. Robert wore Pop's old vellum money-pouch on his belt; there was a tin pail by Townsend's foot.

Pat sighed. "On the take?"

" _Bobby?_ " Han's drawl was dark. "Naaah."

"Solo's back," Robert boomed, ever the slick pitchman. "Got something to prove. Five bits a head, friends, or move along."

Screwing the sight to the stock of his Winchester, Han snorted. "No one'll _pay_ to see m _—_ "

Coins rang into the pail. And again. People began milling through the gate. Han looked up, surprised; a decade older, Pat was not. Whiskey Knot loved its fall fair. Or loved the chance to see someone fail.

Han blew out a bemused breath before frowning back at his verniers. Pat knew he'd never liked the fair as his family did. Every autumn Pop and Pat shared prizes in livestock and produce; Robert made money running his pitching booth. Ma the true star, placing in every matron's competition. It was while collecting a blue ribbon for her knitting that Ma began labor with the sibling Pat held in his arms by morning. Not a girl; not Nell returned to life, as Pat had prayed. Yet he loved the baby at once: a sturdy boy, ornery and alert under his mop of hair.

Han grew into a smart kid, funny and oddly kind, if incorrigibly wild. Tearing away on his pony across the prairie, bareback, before he was six. Teaching himself to swim in the irrigation ditch. Always being dragged home by Robert, kicking gangly legs. Wet, muddy; snowy, dusty, bloody, Han gave Ma fits! Nell's loss always visible in her green eyes, even if never vocalized.

Ma adored her baby, but his savvy, wanderlust and guts didn't impress his father. By the time Han unexpectedly arrived, Pop was forty-five and had parcelled his heart: Ma his trusted helpmeet, Robert his favored firstborn, Pat his true farming partner. Softest part of Spence Solo gone forever with Nell, into the water. Maybe Pop would've done better with another daughter, but he had no use for a third son, especially one of Han's independent temper. Even Han's intuitive horsemanship was renegade to Pop, who found it suspiciously sentimental that Han wouldn't use the lethal eelskin whip even on the wildest horses.

When Han was eight, Pat taught him to shoot. The kid was a ringer, far better than anyone in their family. Han developed an acute eye, dead-still hands and lightning pace. He instinctively understood breeze and angle, breath and delay. And finally he, dark horse at thirteen, sneaked off and entered the fair's shooting contest. Shocked everyone, taking second place. His prize a plump stewing hen (plus, Robert teased, whatever the kid got before he stumbled blushing from behind the tree where Phyllis Halliwell pulled him).

And on the way home, Pop held the reins out to Han. _Go on,_ Spence said, when Han hesitated: _a man's reward for feeding his family._ Gangly with growth, jaw marked with Phyllis' lip-rouge and the novelty of shaving, Han slowly took the smooth-grained leather. Glowing with the pride and responsibility of driving the big family wagon himself. This brush with his father's esteem seemed to compensate Han for countless glowers from under gray brows. Even Pat hadn't outgrown fearing that frown, for his own reasons.

But the next year, the Solos unexpectedly joined the crowd to watch Han compete. Under this pressure Han came sixth of eight. He was doing all right until his fingers fumbled his cartridges to the dirt as he reloaded, leaving him dream-frozen with shame; after that he couldn't hit the side of a barn. The crowd heckled, laughed. Pop walked away.

Some boys wouldn't have returned after such public humiliation. But Han was mulish and three days before he turned fifteen he took first prize. Earned a side of smoked pork. Ma was delighted, Pat knuckled Han's unruly hair. _Making yourself useful, Ham Solo,_ Robert joshed at supper.

At the head of the table, Pop said nothing.

Every fall Han repeated his feat. Set records for consecutive wins; earned the first perfect score. Tithed his family near-banquets of fowl and meat. Kept only a thigh-holster for himself, the calfskin stiff with newness. No reaction from Pop! Like Han's talent was some hustle Spence was too smart to fall for. Meanwhile Pop slapped Pat's shoulder as they received their ribbons together; Pop chuckled at Robert's booth, lobbing horsehide baseballs at bulls-eyes. On the annual ride home, laden with offerings, the kid wore a hope so blatant that Pat sought refuge in his pages. He couldn't bear to see Han's faith turn plaintive, then darkly contained, as the miles, the years, wore on.

Soon Han found trouble. Gambling, drink. Robert indulged too, even much older, a husband and father. But Robert's vice was sly, confined to the private club of his fancy friends. The Marigold Mile. While Han crashed in from Lucky's jingling with winnings, wore and dealt black eyes, glowered hungover on Sundays in the family pew. And when Han was barely seventeen, Pop hired him out to Wyoming on a workman stint. No warning to anyone until the cab arrived to take Han to the train.

 _Make a man outta him,_ _Janie_ , Pop growled, when Ma wept. _Pack his grip._

Pat was stunned beyond obedience: _Pop! What's Han done?_ Spence Solo had always prided himself on being so profitable he needn't job out his sons. Pop silenced Pat with a look.

The bridle he'd been braiding dangling from his fingers, Han stared at Robert. When Robert went silently into the house, Han swallowed, set his jaw. Took the rucksack from Ma, kissed her teary cheek. Got into the cab without one word of farewell or appeal.

The Solo baby returned a man all right. Grown to full breadth and height. Stubbled, deep-voiced; as tanned, lean and tough as a razor strop. He had a broken nose and new charisma, something born of intelligence, resentment, self-reliance. At the fair that fall Han took back his shooting title in a famous display, his taut precision a kind of rage. Set a new record for speed. Crowd still buzzing, even Pop smiling, Han slung his gun and walked away. Didn't claim his prizes. Ignored his name when Robert yelled after him, the escaping child. Han just kept going, eyes stony and distant as the Tetons.

Pat looked back at the newspaper, the caricature of the best shot in Whiskey Knot. And studying his brother's features through the cartoonist's dispassionate eye, an irony struck. Pop had indulged Robert, soundly approved of Pat, was gentlest with Nell. But Han was the Solo who most physically favored the father of Pat's early memories: hard-angled jaw, ranginess, laconic grin. A father who used to growl like a bear, playfully chase his two sons and daughter up the staircase. Pop, before he was fossilized by weather, work, loss, time.

Han smirked, leaning to tap the page. "That s'posed to be me?"

"You're a big draw, baby," Pat said softly.

XXXXXXXXX

Han tugged at the tight neck of his sweater. Ma had surprised him with it this morning, propped up in bed, pulling it from her knitting basket. Her eyes sharp but her body thinner, skin uncanny with advancing luster. Han didn't mention the birthday gift was a day early. Didn't say he hated Ma spending her strength on more _work_. He just thanked his mother and wriggled into the sweater, trying to disguise that it was much too small through the chest, back, shoulders, arms.

 _It'll bring you luck,_ Ma said, _at the fair._

So then Han had to go to the fair, which he hadn't planned on. The last time he _wanted_ to compete, he'd been—what, fifteen? Back when this sweater would've fit him. Back when he believed he could make Pop proud for a goddamn minute.

But what the hell. He'd go shoot one last time. Win some dinner, bring Ma a ribbon for the Solo collection pinned above her treadle Singer. That wall near-papered in faded gradations of blue. What else _could_ Han do for Ma, now? He'd done enough letting her down. Jane Solo's tearaway son would turn twenty-nine tomorrow. Nothing to show for it but a wilful horse and a hunch about riches in his back pocket. Good pals in Chewie and Lando, sure, but no bright, beautiful, laughing wife to walk the midway with, hand in hand. No Leia in their own bed in the coming dawn, bare and loose-haired, to wake him into another year of life.

Han squinted into the rising breeze, the winking light. Windy, but at least it was dry, today. All week, the wet weather had made Han think of last summer, as if he hadn't been haunted by Leia enough. Since their close ride had made her specter maddening, tantalizing flesh. Since the night he sat sentry on her swing, fighting the drive to stride out into the yard, call up to Leia's window, and—what? _I want to come inside._ Ask her, _Sweetheart:_ was any of it real?

The rain said it was. The rain brought Han viscerally back to parking with Leia, down at the river. To that stormy evening when, his hands occupied at his clasp—Han always took his holster off when they went somewhere private together; he liked a gun between him and the world, but not him and his girl—Leia reached for the tie-down, asked where he'd got the gunbelt. The way she touched the leather, both utilitarian and daring, her eyebrow as hooked as her finger, made Han struggle to answer. _Uhm. Fall fair._ He didn't say he won it there. His shooting talent was unimportant in the limited time he had with Leia before Rouge would miss her. _Hmmm,_ Leia mused, with that thoughtfulness that he loved, the consideration she gave even the smallest facts. Like she was detailing some secret map, Han often felt, a way out. _I've always wanted to go to the fair._ With a soft pop, the strap at his thigh gave way to her. _We'll go,_ Han replied, and kissed her.

Later, driving home alone, Han opened the storm curtains to the gusting rain. Trying to chill the ache Leia had so sweetly cursed him with. Her hand in his shirt, how she'd touched him? He knew Leia was deliberate in her actions, and _that_ action was damn sure welcome but Han didn't want to presume—ah, how to ask Leia what she meant? What she wanted?

They'd gone far beyond his grasp of formal courtship _._

And Han meant to court Leia right. Which didn't mean a ban on touch like...that, god no, _god_. He heartily hoped she'd touch him all she liked, all his life. But he didn't want to sneak around much longer; summer near-over, and where were they gonna hide out all winter? Would they kiss each other through frozen mufflers? That was all they needed, Han snorted. More layers.

They could live better than that, together. They could be closer. They could be known.

Han was aware Leia had strict folks. And sure, he'd earned some of his reputation for gambling, drinking, bounding outta town. But hell, he loved that woman, had wages saved, and his mug wasn't on any wanted posters. Surely he wasn't _so_ bad a beau.

Behind a rapt face speckled with rain, Han's mind returned to the fall fair. He'd never liked it, felt like some caboose on the Solo train of winners. But when he said he'd take Leia there, it felt in Han's chest like a bigger vow. Like a promissory on the coastlines Leia missed. Maybe West, to the Pacific, original home of the pearl living in his pocket.

Han hadn't considered the shooting contest in years, but if Leia was there, he'd do it again. Win not for belonging or clannish honor, but to establish himself as a worthy suitor. Let Rouge Antilles, Robert and his pals, all of Whiskey Knot who looked at Han Solo and thought what they thought—fickle, shirker—know he was wooing Leia Organa. He'd win her every prize on offer, pile them at her feet. Surround her. Show her he was not some, what had Pop called him? _good-time souser,_ but someone who could...could feed a family.

He'd prove to Leia that he was a man, a man who wanted her not just in this secret enclosure of leather but a man who loved her; a man who would shoot the damn moon down for her and set it in gold for her finger.

And of course Han hoped Leia would fling herself into his arms when he asked, all kisses and _yes yes yeses_. But he'd take her assent in any language, any slang, so long as it was truly felt: _Marry you? Okay. Yeah._ Turning Fix into the Solo drive, Han grinned at the idea of Leia's rich, refined voice casually accepting his proposal. Somehow it was endearing and reassuring at once. _Sure, Han. Why not? I—_

A stagy cough from Pat wrenched Han from the past. Well, that was for the best. Han couldn't keep twisting memories like a gold-pan in his hands, seeking glints of—ah, what had he missed? How had he been so sure of her; how was he sure even yet that if he could just—

Pat coughed again, bringing his fist to his mouth, using his bent forearm as a kind of pointer. Sounded like he had the blasted galloping consumption. Pat, though quiet and smart, was about as subtle as the bull he was built like. Han tracked Pat's upraised arm to the gate, grumbling "Paddy, no one gives the high sign with their _elb—"_

Han's mouth rounded on a last hurt syllable.

"—oohhww."

She wore a simple, collarless green blouse. Her thick braid was laced with rawhide cord and wrapped in a circlet around her head. The fine bones of her face seemed to catch, then beam back, all the day's available light. But her beauty was not what made Han think of a prizefighter he'd once seen, at this very fair, take a vicious left hook that buckled his knees.

She wore _trousers,_ light brown suede, tight from hip to ankle. Across her back was slung a rifle. Her eyes wide and chin set, Leia Organa stood: lithe and armed. And this is what sent Han back into the fence as though against taut leather ropes. His expression that knocked-out boxer's mixture of mortally perplexed and strangely blissful.

XXXXXXXXX

"I beg your pardon?"

Robert Solo both did and didn't resemble his youngest brother. He had thick hair, but greased his flat; he was tall, but snaky-shouldered. His hazel eyes cold, small, and of fixed color. Fixed now on Leia's face as he blocked the gate, enjoying his power even as he feigned dismay over being forced to wield it over her.

Leia repeated it through her teeth: "I mean to compete."

Rubbing his chin, Robert chuckled. And then he waited. Leia remembered how Robert traded in jovial implication. But this judgement worked only on the chastened, so Leia folded her arms and waited _more_. She had become a woman who neglected chores, left mopping undone and corset tossed to the bedroom floor. She had all day at the fair! She would make Robert say it.

"The contest isn't open," Robert finally said, "to...ladies." He pronounced _ladies_ with the decorous grimace of a man in a top-hat requesting prophylactics from a backstreet apothecary.

Hilarity rippled through the group. A lady sniper? Leia expelled a breath at the laughter. Knowing that they projected a female figure onto her: in heavy skirts, hat, ribs compressed in whalebone. Shooting finger stuck in a thimble. They did not see _her_ , here, standing right here with an actual firearm strapped to her back, flat oxfords laced on her feet. In the suede trousers Luke left for her, seams taken in to sheath her shape. Under her fitted corduroy blouse, an obvious lack of binding; grown accustomed to her own breathing, Leia had sewn herself a supportive band of lace.

She said, "I read the regulations in the newspaper. There was no mention of—"

Brow moist with excited disgust, Daniel Townsend snapped fingers at Leia's tight trousers. "You're indecent."

"Is there an official present to consult on my dress, Mr. Townsend?" Leia asked. "Despite my every faith in your sporting fairness."

Townsend prodded the enamel lapel pin that proclaimed him a member of city council. " _I_ say you're indecent. Unacceptable for public standards." He pressed the button a second time, as though it could trigger some alarm. " _Again._ "

A buzz rose in the crowd: of which repeated indecorum did Townsend speak? These trousers? Leia Organa's scandalous blue dress, which some of them had seen at the Howards'? Or could he dare to mean—

Townsend shrank a step as Han Solo filled the gate. Pushing back his hat, Han raised his brows at Robert, finger-sketching a circular motion in the air—a wheel, a gear. _Get on with it._ He didn't look at Leia, and she rankled anew: what was she, some brake dragging at the pace of Han's glory?

"The hired gi..." Robert caught himself, offered his unctuous smile to Leia. She consciously resisted making a fist. "...Miss Organa is not fit to compete."

Lazily Han braced a hand on each of the gate's opposing posts, long span revealing the abbreviation of his navy-blue sleeves. Against her will, Leia wondered who had knitted the shrunken sweater for him. Not his mother, there were too many errors, and Leia had long admired Jane's flawless handiwork.

"She ain't, huh." Han could have been discussing the weather.

"No she ain't!" Leia turned, along with the crowd, to see the reddened face of Marvin Collins, the current champion. "Shooting's no dog-and-pony show."

Leia shoved her hands into her trouser pockets to hide their quiver of rage. She'd give no one claim that her flighty nerves were frayed—by inherent sin, by the course of the moon. By Reverend Blair's euphemism, _the reparation of Eve._

"How fortunate," Leia said with level venom, "that I am bipedal."

 _C'n see that,_ Leia swore she heard Han mutter, flicking his eyes to her trousers. But when she looked sharply at him, he remained slouched between his posts, hip cocked, as though he'd rather be anywhere else.

"Won't compete against no woman," Collins yelled.

"A champion takes on all comers," Leia retorted. "If he doesn't have skimmed milk in his veins."

Han's upper lip twitched. "What's runnin' in your pipes, Collins?"

"P...pure kerosene!" Collins blustered. "Ain't worried about no little girl—"

"'Course not, champ." Han's gray irises glittered with scorn. "You won last year with...what, a whole seven targets outta twelve?"

Collins flushed further at the laughter breaking out around him. "I say it again, Solo. I won't shoot if your w—if _she_ does. It's improper."

The other six men with rifles nodded, vocally agreed to boycott.

"She can't use my targets, neither." Fred Hart ran Whiskey Knot's only cafe; every year he donated cracked crockery to be strung into the trees and set along the fence. Leia tried to speak— _self-important twit_ —but felt her jaw lock to think that she'd taken Luke there to eat.

"Well, there it is," Robert said. "Can't shoot without opponents or targets, can we, Miss Organa? If you'd like to be a spectator, that'll be five ce—"

Han barked at the crowd, "Who's here to see me shoot?"

A comprehensive whoop. Eager rattle of change.

"I wanna see you _lose,_ " someone heckled.

"Same coin, pal." Han shrugged. "Here's how it is." He hitched a thumb at Leia. " _She_ shoots, I shoot. You boot her? You get—" Han sneered at the riflemen. "— _them_ clowns, some plates not one of 'em can hit, and a newspaper cartoon of my ass walkin' on out."

Protest rabbled the crowd. _Refund._ Robert and Daniel traded a stricken look.

Leia stared at Han, wrestling the dissonance of his gesture. His tone was brusque, his expression closed. He didn't look at Leia, didn't call her by name. Yet this extortionate action on her behalf—what was Han after? Was this an impersonal defiance, a salvo in the lifelong battle between Han and his brother? Or did Han seek to lure Leia onto his own turf, upon which to humble her himself?

"This is absurd," Townsend sputtered."We don't even know if the lady can—"

Now Han looked, really looked, down at Leia. His voice that old, low caress.

"She can shoot."

It wasn't a question, and it wasn't permission. It was statement of recognition. Leia felt the warming of her own gaze. Whatever betrayals festered between them, one thing remained: Han _did_ know her once. Knew Leia yet, enough to understand she made no empty threats. For an inscrutable moment Han held her gaze. His eyes softened at the edges, from flint to the green of the surrounding pines.

Then the crowd pressed forward, waving their admission. The original contestants happily jettisoned. Organa girl and her former fellow? Such spectacle! Such unexpected return on their nickels, to see Han Solo whip his uppity filly to saddle.

"Her inappropriate dress—" Robert began, holding up his palms for order.

Han shot his brother a brief, incredulous contempt. He returned his eyes to Leia's as he removed his hat, nestling it on the fence with bedpost insouciance. Reaching for his nape, Han jerked his sweater over his head. It was almost like before, Leia thought with a lance to the heart, on the shore at Falcon Ridge. But where _that_ Han was all affecting rush—toeing out of his boots and tugging off his shirt at once, near-falling over in his eagerness for her—this man had a cutting edge. Emerging from the sweater not with urgent wonder but with a curt shake of head. Hard to imagine _this_ Han so nervous, enchanted, stunned. By anything. By anyone.

He wore a tight white henley undershirt buttoned from low-slung trousers to broad ribcage, baring the collarbones and muscle, wiry copper hair Leia remembered. As the crowd whistled, catcalled, scolded his underwear, Han gave no sign that he cared, or felt the chilled air at his chest. Pushing up his sleeves, he tossed the sweater across his shoulder and stepped back from the entrance, gesturing Leia through.

Leia performed a tiny, mocking curtsy. Han arched an eyebrow at her as his hand swept through his hair, taming it enough to replace his hat. Gave his brim an insolent twist as she passed.

Han said it with wry courtliness: "Miss."

"Oh, I won't," Leia tossed back.

XXXXXXXXX

Pat snorted at Robert sending his son Edward to the fair's midway to scavenge targets. Bobby's friend Fred Hart sulking over his crate of withheld plates. Robert's loyalty went only so far as the money at stake. Eddie came back with a sack of discarded sarsaparilla and beer bottles, three canning jars—two empty, one full of peaches—and a pie-plate spackled with scraps of pastry. These suspiciously obtained items were propped atop the farthest reach of fence, just before the dense pinewoods. In earlier years, this was the placement reserved solely for each contestant's final and most difficult target. A single shot, and one that only Han himself unfailingly hit. But now Han and Leia would shoot consecutively at this punishing length, the winner taking best of fifteen targets.

As Han and Leia walked to the shooting line, Pat was struck by how right they looked together: matched, even with their marked difference in build and stature. Han wore his undershirt; Leia wore trousers. She had moxie, he had swagger. They stood abreast at the chalked strip, not acknowledging one another. Somehow Pat expected them to interlink their fingers.

First in alphabetical order, Leia unslung her gun from her back. Her rituals so contained—slotting her cartridge, tossing dust to gauge the wind, clicking her sight neatly into place—as to make the sunlit hairs escaping her braided crown some quiet sign of rebellion. Leia placed the toes of her left foot on the line, flexed into her own slight weight. Smoothly she lifted the Sharps to her right shoulder. The crowd hushed into relishing pressure, like Leia was stepping onto a high, thin wire far overhead. In the air a barely-suppressed wish: _Fall. Fall, bitch._

But no such malice issued from her tall opponent. Despite the skeptical angle of his chin, the arms folded across his half-naked chest, Han's look on Leia was warm, constant, fierce. As though to cool or remove it would be to yank a net from under her.

Unwavering. Yes, that worked, but the real word Pat wanted was _faithful._

He didn't know quite what had gone wrong, between the pair. Ma wouldn't discuss it, and what Robert said Pat couldn't believe: _Han jilted her, Pat,_ Robert spat. _What, you need it written down?_ But Pat did know that Han had been genuinely sweet on Leia, last year. Han didn't leave after harvest as he'd proclaimed to anyone who'd listen; he stayed all fall and winter. Always rushing off somewhere in the gig in the mild spring and summer. Whistling "Rising of the Moon," which Ma used to sing in her clear soprano at socials after a nip of sherry. _At the old spot by the river quite well known to you and me._

Then, the August incident. Main Street. Pat hadn't seen it, and counted himself lucky. He _had_ witnessed the scene in the kitchen, after. Han crazy-haired, wet and half-dressed, more a mess than he'd ever been as a wayward boy. Ma's handprint blooming across his coarse-stubbled cheek. _Dear girl, poor girl, Han! How dare—_ And when Han shouted back at them all _I love her I love her,_ gentle Ma, she slapped Han again. _You think that's enough to protect her?_ Her voice shaking: _Han Solo._ _How could you be so._

Eyes wild and filling, Han hurled hoarse words at himself: _stupid careless selfish,_ stabbing his finger into his own bare chest. _I know I know I_

When Han left Whiskey Knot soon after, Pat rode out to River Bend. He'd got on with Leia more than his natural reserve usually allowed. But Leia was gone too, Rouge said, and not with the man she called _that damned bounder_. She said, _Pat. Just piss off, yeah?_ Rouge gave an exhausted cough. _Haven't you Solos done enough?_

Pat liked Rouge, and he liked Breha. He had liked Meredith, too; their youngest sister, Nell's best friend. And thinking of the girls reminded Pat that there was enough hurt in the world, so he bit his tongue to keep from saying back, _Nothing you haven't done to us._

He asked Robert again. Robert didn't even look up from Pop's ledger. _Pat._ Pat! _You still don't get it?_ _The baby got bored with his china doll._ An ugly chuckle. _Broke her, run off rather than see the preacher._

Pat blushed at Robert's crudeness. And then paled with the awful notion: _Bobby._ _Leia's not...?_

 _No child. Han's a lucky toss,_ Robert said. _Always was._ This answer so bitter that Pat flashed on Robert's own subdued expression when he wed Florence. Their first daughter born seven months later. Prematurely, Flo insisted, though the newborn was a sound six-pounder.

But Pat knew better than his own question even as he asked it. Knew better of the man who had once been a little boy riding gleeful on Pat's thick shoulders. Han was restless, resentful; he'd quit Pop and he surely paid an unspoken price for that, but Han wouldn't bolt on a girl in trouble. Let alone a girl he looked at the way Han did Leia in church. Jittering his long legs through the sermon, Han twisted his hymn-book in his fists until he'd permanently curled the leather cover. Leia's dark eyes flashing back from across the aisle, smile tucked into her high collar. Every Sabbath, Pat dryly expected the Lord's house to combust from flying, impenitent sparks. Flee the preacher? Even here, over a year later, Pat remembered that beseeching crack in Han's powerful voice: _I love her I love her._ No: Han wouldn't have needed a shotgun at his spine to join Leia at the altar.

 _Broke. Broken._ Was that how it went, Pat wondered, between men and women? How it had to go, for the couple in unorthodox reunion at this white border? Pat doubted anyone could break Leia Organa. Sleek and compact in austere clothing, as if she were her own holdout weapon. She drew her bead, immune to the snickers, wolf-whistles, loud denials of her chances. And when she reached some private point of knowing, Leia exhaled into stroke of trigger, small shoulder stout against kick of stock.

Her bottle shattered. The crowd hissed and recoiled as one, a riled snake. _Fluke,_ someone protested. _Fluke!_

Han's eyes blazed, then sagged half-closed. Not relief, not surprise, but with the infliction of some primal, swooning wound he couldn't hide. Again Pat saw Han as a boy, loping up the Solo drive from the schoolhouse, palm purple from the teacher's strap. Getting up, up, up every time he was tossed from a horse he refused to thrash. Pretending to nap on rides home from the fair, hat pulled low over his dying hopes. Climbing into that hansom cab, not looking back. People saw the scar on Han's chin as a kind of boast, but to Pat it was manifestation of insistent safety. _C'mon._ Han scoffed, at all expressed concern. _That don't hurt me._

As Leia lifted her head, remarkable eyes narrowed with feral satisfaction that was more wolf than doe, Han fumbled for his indifference. But even as his face glossed distant, Han's fingers worried at the beltloop above his trouser pocket. Chamois nap worn flat there in a thin strip, from a watch-chain, or...with a wince Pat recalled what he'd found in Han's top drawer, looking for clues to his whereabouts when Ma fell ill. A slender band of gold, set with a pearl and strung on a cord, loose ends frayed with savage unravelling. Rawhide stubbornly retaining the telltale loops and whorls of the true love knot.

XXXXXXXXX

Han didn't use grit or a sucked finger to measure the breeze. Just knuckled back his hat to peer at branches, then thumbed the lever on his Winchester, nestling it at his broad shoulder in a way that struck Leia as oddly tender. With no perceptible pause to aim, his own bottle seemed to break the moment Han squinted into his sight. His dispatch so fast it felt like rebuttal of Leia's own process.

The crowd howled with thrill. Gave Han all they'd withheld from her.

"Go easy on 'er, boy," someone leered.

Lowering his rifle, Han turned his face down to Leia's. His evergreen eyes shaded with...defiance? Appeal? Pride? When her chin lifted involuntarily to him, Han's pupils pooled outward and he leaned closer, lips opening as though to confide some plot or secret.

And in the rush of blood to her cheeks, under the complex lowering of his stare, Leia feared what her own eyes revealed of her thoughts: Han shot cool and fast, all right. But watching his full mouth part, Leia remembered how Han kissed slow and hot. Sometimes with his eyes closed, sometimes not. Sometimes they'd made sport of trying to watch. Braving the intense exchange, the dizzying stages: joy to challenge, vulnerability, sweet forcefulness. Soft laughter melting into small goading sounds of hunger.

With drowner's panic, Leia broke the look. She knelt, dug fingers in dirt. Rose with earthy knees and tossed her dust, shaping the wind from the north. At Leia's abrupt turn, Han's lips went from gentling the edge of speech to brutish curl. Bitterly he shook his head, offering a sneer at the trees.

Leia reloaded, seamlessly returning her gun to delicate dell of shoulder. Felt determination and spirit coursing from brain to eye, lungs to finger. An empty Mason jar disintegrated.

Now the crowd gave a bovine lowing. Their mood skewed from scorn for Leia to spooked superstition. But Han whistled, one cheery note. Girded by her power, Leia turned back to Han, ire locked behind hard beam of smile. Han's pivot to the line was hard too, mockingly militaristic. His stance, leaning back from the hip, crackled with masculine arrogance. When his second target smashed Han offered Leia a stiff half-bow, smirk provocatively askew.

The sunlight changed as clouds blew in, rays piercing and diffusing at sporadic whim. Under pine boughs tossing with encroaching weather, Han and Leia glared at one another. Crowd forgotten. Just him, just her, just this test. Each understood that the first to miss would make some admission to the winner. Leia hit her next bottle. Han's swift response felt like rejoinder. Gritting her teeth, Leia reset her shoulder to wood, pushed her pace. Pushed against the weight of _Han_ —who he was, had been to her—pushed against her own stubborn stake in what Han Solo wanted and felt, meant and thought. Muscles at his jaw growing taut, Han pushed Leia Organa right back.

The audience was suspended by the tension of sharp reports rolling on echo of each shot before. By the percussive rhythm of breaking glass, ignition hiss and clap of hammer. But it was taxing to shoot nonstop at this elite length, at this vicious speed. Han's corded forearms began to twitch; Leia's shoulders trembled. The remaining targets, mostly transparent, seemed to recede from the strained eye. Leia's hands shook between shots, Han clamped his plump lower lip between his teeth. Once-managed breathing became ragged, overlapping. Still she hit, he hit; with each target an escalation in pressure, disavowal to accusation to plea: _I don't miss you. I miss you. Do you miss me?_

Han stared Leia down as she lined up the thirteenth shot. Her eyelids fluttering with effort, hair loosening in the wind, Leia hit the pie-plate with a small sound of relief. Without missing a beat Han raised his rifle, sighted on his last target. But then he paused, jumpily lowered the gun again, flexed spasmodic fingers against his thigh—that thigh quivering minutely, too, only Leia was close enough to him to note. Scowling, Han caught her look. With a harsh bark he tore off his hat and hurled it to the side, letting the wind take it. Hair blowing and eyes wild, Han jerked his rifle to his shoulder and fired.

He'd gone too far, Leia knew at once. Han knew it too, that he'd veered from cocksure skill into recklessness; he had not bargained for the wind, for this trickster light. But when Han's bullet failed to meet his final bottle the crowd went on staring, expectant. Surely their hotshot was invincible, even as his loss was declared with dull _whang_ of lead against wood.

To the resounding silence as truth sunk in, Han offered nothing. His face was adamantly still. Slowly he lowered his gun, eyes hooded, inscrutable under his chaotic sheaf of hair. Then Han's lips rounded and his eyes fell shut, brow knitting with something so individual and intense that Leia felt voyeuristic. She almost turned away—but Han turned himself to her first. Looked Leia again full in the face, leaning closer. His expression half helpless confession, half demand.

Not taking his eyes from her, animal amber, Han jerked his head toward the fence.

The last target was the canned peaches. A daunting shot, up on a higher, uneven post. Hard to cleanly see: wind stirred the gleam from the Mason jar, syrup splitting the guide of light into decoy bolts of gold. Leia swallowed, briefly uncertain—not afraid of her chances, not afraid of loss. The dull shock emanating in waves of almost-sound from the crowd was vindication enough. No laughing at Leia now, no dog-or-horse, no more joke-clad threats to show up on her porch. No more waving handkerchiefs at her in the street, slyly begging for her stitch.

The sole of her foot began to itch, where they all knew Leia had been mended herself.

No, Leia was afraid of nothing. But she had seen Han's face when he lost. Something of himself slipping into the past even as he grasped— _did_ he grasp for it? He'd looked, to her, both pained and ecstatic. And Leia found that despite everything, she had no spirit for humiliating Han Solo, even as she'd refused to let him beat her. She had already won, she didn't need to hit it, this last target. But there was something in her that could not leave the challenge unfinished. The compulsion had nothing to do with what Leia wished. Had nothing to do with anyone except herself.

And Han gave Leia the smallest nod, again inclined his whiskered jaw toward the fence. In this hybrid motion was both insistence and gentleness, and Leia felt the space left by his closeness. Missed her own way of nudging him into kiss. She closed her eyes on his face, his smile laced with wistful gallows defiance.

She turned her face to gauge the dampening wind. Her arms burning, neck rigid, eyes hot stones in her head. Leia tried to lift her arms; her muscles seized in agonizing waves, a bite of lighting under her ribs. Yet when she opened her eyes her gun was back in position. On instinct Leia aimed for a point above and to the right of the mercurial light. With a crack that could have come from the sky, the jar erupted in jagged sweetness.

Leia heard the crowd's scream, her own own raw cry. She heard Han use the epithet he'd never allowed from himself, around her, when he was hers: now he breathed it hot, free and awed, so close it stirred her hair. _Fuck._ And then he laughed. Really laughed, deep and rich and slightly mad, his eyes constricting, head falling back.

Reeling with deferred stress, Leia almost collapsed, pulse cascading over itself. Eyebrows shooting up, Han bent at the knees, seized her elbow. Dishevelled, close, gleam of sweat at his chest, Han was the man from her lost Boston escapist fantasy. Eyes shining on her, grip tight, panting his laughter.

If it was a mirage, Leia was too spent to resist it. She let Han take her weight. Just for a moment. Just for a moment she let herself rest in it.

XXXXXXXXX

Han couldn't find her. It was like the dream he had, again and again the year after her. Couldn't see Leia in some crowd, so small, lost in some crowd. Bleeding and lost in some crowd and he was wet, he was soaked and pleading with—

Han had woken with a choked sound, cramped and cold in his upturned saddle. Under Chewie's level but not unkind stare, tending coffee and salt pork over the fire. On his bedroll, Lando reclined on his side in his buckskin suit that somehow never got dirty. Asking with an easy smile, _Leia your lady?_

 _S'my birthday,_ Han rasped, stupidly. Tongue like cured suede from last night's whiskey. Pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes—against headache, self-hatred, mutinous failure. Against Robert's voice: _Aw, cry-baby. Cry-baby-boy._ Finding her at last, here all along against the insides of his eyes: Leia. Smiling with a soft, mysterious grief as she flared in changing shades but would not fade. Not fade away.

She'd quit the contest fast. Had Han driven her off, or was it the attention? Mayor Howard so impressed with her impossible shot, he'd offered Leia Robert's bucket of nickels. Pat near-choked on his lemonade at the expression on Bobby's face. But much as Han liked the image of Leia as a fleet, noble thief like in those stories Ma read him when he was young, much as Han would gleefully see Robert sacked to Leia's gain, Han knew she wouldn't take the cash. And indeed Leia went steely at even the hint of charity. _The turkey will be fine, sir, thank you._

And Robert handed her the sack with actual graciousness, relieved not to lose his take. Leia blinked at the fifteen-pound bagged bird but she took it, provoking a laughter from the crowd that was almost fond. Relieved to find her a tiny girl again, rather than some deadly nymph. When Townsend gave Han second prize, the crowd cheered too much. Already forgetting they'd seen a blessed miracle of a shot, Han thought as he smiled tightly. Or maybe they refused to attribute it to Leia. They clapped like Han had hit that wondrous mark, and had now been robbed of his rightful spoils—fruit, when he deserved something slaughtered. For a fleeting moment, Han thought of Pop, felt a surge of defensive pride. Fine, a bushel of apples weren't exactly supper, but they weren't a kick in the business, either.

When Han turned back from Mayor Howard's handshake—just in time to dodge his handsy daughter—Leia was gone.

Han had planned to help Pat in the yearling tent. But seeing Han use his height to scan the departing crowd for someone much smaller, Pat just slapped Han's shoulder. _Well done, baby brother,_ Pat said. _Go on._ His eyes kind as ever behind his spectacles.

 _Paddy. But you—_

 _Nah, go on_. Pat grinned. He snagged an apple from Han's slat barrel, rubbed it against his flannel shirt. _Bobby's better at shovelling horseshit, anyway._

So Han strode, fast as he could with a barrel of fruit. He moved down the slope to where the carts and wagons were hitched. Looked around there a bit. Must have looked a real sorry son of a bitch, hopeful and perplexed and sweating in his wool undershirt. No Leia. Unstrapping Fix from his feedbag, loading up his apples and climbing into the gig, Han didn't have to click his tongue or slap the slack reins to Fix's back; sensing his human's urgency, Fix trotted on his own.

The clouds loomed, black and boiling. And there Leia was, walking down the lane; gun at her surely tortured back, huge hide sack clutched to her chest, almost obstructing her vision. Even from the gig, Han could see Leia's arms shaking around her burden. He shook his head, hazy with disbelief. Leia must have taken the overgrown shortcut path through the woods, dodging branches, turkey and all. There was a sycamore leaf in her hair. She could be a small doe, if she wasn't so lethal.

"This...creature," Han marvelled to Fix. Fix gave an indignant trill, as though his perfect gait was being disparaged. "Not you," his master growled. "Well, yeah, you. You're the creature. _She's_ a damned—"

 _Sniper. Robber. Vengeful angel_. How Han had missed her. How _had_ he missed her, this woman in trousers, lugging her massive plunder? Hell, Han knew it wasn't gentlemanly or decent but he couldn't stop his eyes following the swell and roll of her hips in those—damned—

Han realized, with gentle shock, that he'd seen those pants before. Funny how they had looked, on the towhead Leia kissed on Silver Street, like play-acting. Pantomime cowboy stuff. Not that camouflage brag of the guys at Lucky's, though, the ranchers and hands flashing their Saturday-night wages. With that kid—Luke—it was more like All Hallow's Eve. Not a pose, exactly, but...costume, sure.

Playful.

But Han wasn't jealous of Luke, not this time. No, no. Han knew her, it was Han who knew Leia Organa inside out. Known what she could—what she had to—do. He had seen her savage small face when she hit that perfect shot, knew how just how it felt; knew to catch her when she almost fell. Inhaled her when she leaned close. She was _Han's_ girl, damn it. She was his girl still. And that day in the hayfield with her returned to Han with enough power to quell his breath. What he'd said against her clothed shoulder, his voice rough, feeling himself arch at the tensile warmth of her parted thighs: _No mermaid, you._

Not in those pants. In those pants, kill or be killed, _Leia_ was not playing one damn hell bit.

The rain began. Sprinkling, then thickening. Leia looked up, huffed. It made Han smile yet, the impatient sarcasm in her face. As though only she could run the universe right.

 _Well, she ain't much wrong._

"You want a ride?"

Her shoulders, already stiff, tensed further at his voice. She didn't turn. Adjusting her arms around her bag, Leia kept walking. With a low murmur Han slowed Fix, who was not trying to pass Leia by, but giddily prancing at the sight of her. Leia shot the stallion an affectionate look, but did not relent in her stride. Man and animal followed along as the rain intensified. Han watched a rivulet of auburn hair reach Leia's shoulder.

Mournfully, Han clucked his tongue. "Pride is a sin."

She stared straight ahead. "My favorite one."

"Really?" Han widened guileless eyes, but his voice was a purr. "Ain't mine."

He shot a blithe half-grin at her narrow look. Leia rolled her eyes. Again they went on.

"Say," Han mused. "Luggin' a turkey is good for pride, but y'know what's even better? A cross. We'll get you a big ol' cross, and—"

Leia snorted. She couldn't help it. Han pressed his entrance.

"Hey, champ. Didn't you hear?" he called. "You _won. Your_ pride is just fine."

Leia stopped. And then she turned. Peeping over the bag at him, wet and unexpectedly vulnerable. _Champ,_ Han saw at once. It was _champ._ Big eyes scanning his face, to see if he was making fun. Well, Han _was_ making fun. But not of Leia. Not of her accomplishments, of her efforts to free herself. Not ever.

Han pulled Fix short and swung down into the rain, crossed to where Leia stood at Fix's head. He held fruit out to her. But before Leia could figure how to unwrap her arms from her turkey, Fix lunged with startling swiftness. The apple was obliterated in a gushing crunch.

"Ayy- _ayyy!_ " Han squawked. "Gluttony is a sin, too, y'big—"

Fix grinned, cheerfully nosing the sack in Leia's arms. "No, no. Horses aren't carnivorous," Leia softly chided Fix, unable to stroke him with her hands occupied but leaning to rub her cheek to his muzzle. Han swallowed the stinging rush of feeling, the wave that had once carried him to the jeweller.

She raised an eyebrow at Fix's persistent interest in her turkey. "What have you been feeding him?"

"Steak," Han shrugged.

And now Leia laughed, rich and real, gave Han an affectionate look. His undershirt was soaked almost transparent, but oh, he felt warm in her eyes again.

He hooked a thumb at the gig.

"I, uh." Han babbled. "I got more apples." He immediately grimaced.

"Oh, alright then." Leia smiled. "Surely no sin could come from accepting an apple."

XXXXXXXXX

They crunched in companionable silence as they rode. Han couldn't remember enjoying the taste of anything he'd won, before. This apple was great, crisp in the crisp air. Giving the breeze a cider flavor when he inhaled. The leather curtains rattled with rain. In this rhythm, in this small space, memories were mercifully kept at bay by the corporeal fact of Leia's presence. But reality brought its own dangers.

Leia was enjoying her apple, too. She gave a little sound of pleasure as she chewed, swelling Han's chest with something too complicated to parse. He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. Her face was wet with rain, eyes closed. Hair falling down, lush fringe of lashes spiked. She swallowed her bite, nodded to herself. It was only now, Han realized, that Leia knew she'd won. Let herself know it in all her beautiful bones. Her head fell back, rosebud lips opening, a deliverance Han bit his own lips to witness. A ferocious satisfaction, like—

Han had to look down. But that was no safer, her shirt plastered to her chest. _No, no, Solo_ —lower yet! But there Han's eyes caught on Leia's knees, evocative with earth. He saw her on the shooting course, moving smoothly down to her knees and up into the breeze, offering dust like some spell. Alive, wild, skilled. Leia, here—hair loose and wet, her knees filmed with dirt. A streak of cordite at her cheek. A killer. An absolute—

Han choked on a chunk of apple: her wonderful eyes were open, and calmly on him. Leia watched him with those brown eyes—so missed, so mysterious. _Princess. Huntress._ Ah, if she'd just move close again. Take the reins, take 'em, he'd happily trade the boss-leather for a grip on Leia's capable, delicate fingers. Let her head find its old home at his shoulder, aching now from the kick of his Winchester. Aching for long lack of her weight there.

This look Leia gave him, it was long and unbreaking. Han gave it back, watching her polish fall gorgeously apart. Clothing soaked and rumpled and hair tumbling, Leia stared on, utterly untroubled. It was like some lovely molting. No lace at her throat anymore, sleek bare column. _Mmmm. Little Robin Hood,_ Han would murmur now, if he had the chance, into milky arc of neck. _Robbin' fools of their hearts out in the woods._

Jesus: the natural shape of her breasts, nipples peaked. _The realities of the female shape._ Han felt like some beast. He would not look, he did not look, did _not_ look, but his thoughts. His thoughts.

Was this all right? Was this sin, or disrespect? Leia, Leia next to him, close again, behind only cotton and buttons. Little killer. Han wanted her to push him down to the leather seat, climb astride him. He wanted to press her against a tree, feel those sueded legs twine around his waist. True love knot. Han Solo was not a praying man but Jesus, Jesus. Christ. Leia could bring anyone to their kn—

"Thank you," Leia said, quietly.

Han felt something in him shutter against those knowing eyes.

"...didn't _let_ you win," he muttered.

"I know," she said, amused. She was shivering, a little. Tersely Han handed her his sweater. Leia looked doubtful. "Won't your—" she began, then stopped.

"My ma, she. Han said gruffly. "Don't fit."

She shot him a puzzled expression, but tugged the sweater on. Han busied himself pulling his roughnap jacket over his own half-nakedness. A layer of protection—from her, against himself. A way to evade her searching concern.

He should have known she would track him.

"Han. That night," Leia said. "I meant to—"

Han froze in a sleeve, his breath held heavy in his chest. Leia looked back, her eyes honest and brave and scared. And there he read the words _—ask you inside. I meant to say. I meant to explain, I—_

"Meant to thank you for caring for. For Aldera, like that."

Han exhaled in a soft, rueful hiss. Turning his shearling collar up to his neck, he felt his smile spread distant and resigned. Ah, his protection, his pathetic favor. Small offerings rendered void by all he could not know of her.

"Wasn't hard," Han shrugged, tone flip as his collar. "Y'know horses. Just throw 'em a pork chop once in awh—"

"I'd like to stop being enemies," she said, as though discovering this for herself. Then she nodded, decisive, nervy.

"Swee—" Han winced. "You ain't ever been my...enemy."

"I'd like to be—"

"Leia." His sigh so quiet it was a plea.

Her lips twisted; bitter, tender, mirthful. "Would an enemy wish you happy birthday?"

"How'd you—" Han trailed off, suspended between surprise and the sting of her mistake. The date the first target she'd aimed for and missed.

Not so fast.

"Tomorrow, I mean. Your mother. Told me, she." With rare bashfulness Leia toyed with woollen cuffs, so short on him, so long on her. Then her gaze fell on the bulky prize inside the bag between them, and sharpened. "Come for dinner," Leia said, all in a rush.

Han's mouth fell open, then closed with a snap.

"I can't eat it all by myself." Leia flushed, set her chin. "Tomorrow. It won't keep, and it's your birth—"

"I don't like charity any more'n you do."

"It's not...all right, as a thank you. You didn't have to take up for me, out there. You could have just—"

Han looked at all that lay between them on the leather seat. A dead bird. His belt strapped around his hips. A gun at his thigh, reins in his hands. _Her_ hands to herself. Guns between them now, that was for sure, despite every eager clink of metal that had ever heralded their past closeness. Her dirty knees, prettily splayed around her own rifle. Han gritted his teeth. _No mermaid, you._

"If you can't accept the invitation, I'd rather—"

"Is it an invitation," Han asked, "when you got a gun?"

"What're a few guns between friends?"

Han rubbed his whiskers. No mermaid, her. Had he really bought a pearl, for this assassin-girl? Thought he'd protect her. Feed her, feed their—well. _This_ girl would murder any aggressor, hunt to feed her own babes. Babes she'd somehow conjure from her own flesh. Shoot the moon down for herself, wear it not as a ring but some pagan trophy. Such thoughts should have made Han Solo feel useless. Instead he found himself exhilarated, baited, craving. In the teeth of a spiky lust that left him equal parts hunter and quarry.

Her face was naked, and in it Han read hope. The offering was hers. The asking, the risk. _So beautiful, Sweetheart, in that sweater._ He thought of the fall fair. He thought of luck.

"...alright," Han said. "Sure, Leia. Why not?"


	10. Fire 1

Wet-haired in unbuttoned trousers, suspenders slung at lean hips, Han frowned between two shirts tossed on his quilt. Which to wear to her supper, Sunday linen or humble flannel? He'd abandoned each when he tore out across the Midwest. The linen he left because he'd never had much use for church; at the terrible end of that beautiful summer, Han would've met Old Scratch if only any of it could be reversed. And the green flannel he'd worn to the Christmas social seemed to stretch back in time itself, echoing the touch of that treacherous little—

Ah, Han had long heard the jilted drunks at Lucky's, preaching the evil of women who'd torched their souls. _Jezebel. She-devil_. _Bitch._ But he was unable to call her that, even in the gentle dawn he knew she was gone. No, Han could not call her that, even as he touched the match to her note and watched it go up, holding the parchment until flame licked his fingertips.

There was one other shirt he did not pack. Blue cotton, hideously enriched with creek-silt and blood, tiny mocking flakes of silver. Cloth ripped from how tight he'd clutched it around her. That shirt, Han burned with her damned letter. _Ashes to ashes._ And at this secret pyre for his love of Leia Organa, tears reached Han after all, as they had not in the churchyard, over the grave of his father.

Leia liked the green. She'd said so.

Han watched his arm stretch for flannel, then stop. Leia liked the green...before. He reached to drag fingers through his hair, remembered just in time he'd combed it. Stopped himself again. _Stop, stop, stop._ Growing up, it seemed that word was all he heard.

Rules. He'd never been worth a damn at 'em. Always Han Solo's hand strapped red for walking the schoolhouse roof on a dare. For lighting ha'penny firecrackers, throwing them clear just before the bang and flare. With such scorn for his basic safety, the hoity-toity manners Robert affected—far beyond the social courtesies Ma taught them—were, to Han, written in smoke. He had a firm handshake and chewed with his mouth closed, he bathed daily and wore clean clothes. Beyond that, Han figured, who cared? Sure, he swore. Drank. Neglected his razor. Rode fast, wagered, wore his hat (sometimes his gun) to dances. Panned for gold, meant to see the world. Life was short. Han wasn't gonna spend it learning his forks.

But underneath his youthful bravado, Han never knew why his behavior provoked such severity. Why, since he was a boy, so many folks took some scolding whip to him, as that drover meant to do to Fix. When everyone took liberties, everyone had tricks, most much worse than his! After Pop kicked him out, Han finally understood: the problem wasn't his nerve, not even that he wanted more from life. It was that he couldn't, or wouldn't, hide it.

Most of what interested Han about living existed outside himself, so he didn't dwell on his apartness. His solitary bent appeared, though, in his walk, the set of his shoulders, the ironic slant to his smart mouth. He fully expected, with a matter-of-fact lack of self-pity, to remain a bachelor. Han wasn't Patrick; he ached for women in worldly fashion, enough that it vexed him. But even though, as a man, he had free sexual rein—so long as it was kept hidden—for women sex required marriage, and Han couldn't imagine spinning sweet lies about his intentions. A hand of poker was one thing, but bluffing for lust was well beneath him.

Yet Han couldn't reconcile himself to a lifetime of false companionship, either. Each time he imagined being wedded he saw a small house on his father's land, a day working the fields, stilted conversation with some nice but distant wife at supper. The mute lying next to a benign stranger in the dark, night after night, year after year and—it made him shudder. He wasn't the type to rent affections by the hour. So that was that. Han Solo was, in his latter twenties, not a virgin but surely closer than any gossip would guess him.

And then Han met, over a half-broke horse, the girl who couldn't hide or settle, either. It all worked. It all clicked. They spoke in torrents; they rode in close, flexible silence; God, how she made him laugh. Nothing was effort, with Leia. No rules to break because all was rightness.

Or so he'd believed.

His name would be forever linked to Leia's in the petty history of Whiskey Knot; reviled there, or revered, as her defiler. How everyone outside the livery stable, or inside the sewing circle, would cluck over the truth. If they knew how Han's fingers had trembled, almost strumming the laces at the small of her back. His famous deftness obliterated by Leia pressed so close, toes on his boots and palms flat at his chest, her kiss at the base of his throat.

 _I dare you,_ she whispered, into that arrowhead hollow dividing his collarbones.

Taking her shapely hips in his hands, Han aimed for cavalier— _Sweetheart, a dare is different than a bet—_ but this default evasion was offset by convulsive bob of his Adam's apple. He felt Leia's lips curved triumphant against that movement _._ And then she stepped back from Han enough that he could see her corset fall away. She wanted to watch _him_ watch. To call his bluff.

Han couldn't have suppressed it if he wanted to, his ruined groan at her revelation: Leia gilded in light through her thin chemise. He had to close his eyes against her, she was like the sun herself, burning through that last layer. When he looked again, she had moved into the water. And there Han was, scrambling to escape his simple shirt, boots, trousers. Falling over in his haste to follow! Hardly the cool seducer of local rumor.

Still, when Han remembered—and he was powerless not to, that afternoon as seared into him as her letter—Leia's teasing was tender when he caught her. She shared his fear and eagerness, shaking in his arms despite the August heat. Heart fluttering in her neck, beating its tensile butterfly strength. Their kisses clumsy with hunger, gathering in power, dizzying and deep; laughing breathless nerves against each other's lips.

But even enthralled, even unbearably ready, Han held enough sense to know that Leia—that the risks for Leia were—well, to know, and so Han spoke again to her, this time low and close. _You can be certain of me._ Just the sort of words men used to persuade women, that Han had long refused to falsely employ. But with Leia, this was no enticing lie—oh he wanted her, wanted Leia so he felt he'd die but Han needed her to know it first, that he loved her, was hers forever. Whatever may come. And there on the urgent edge of it all, Han felt Leia wanted him too; loved him too, down to his singular, restless soul.

But Pop had been right all along: the word for Han was _reckless_.

Han knew, of course he knew he'd failed her. He was most of a decade older! He should've been wiser. Stronger. Braver: if he'd had the guts to ask sooner, if they'd been wed, or even betrothed, when—if she'd worn his ring on her finger, then...

He'd never forgive himself for his errors, but he hadn't imagined, until Leia's letter, that it was over. How many times had Han read her note, scanning frantically for the joke? Even after he torched the paper the words remained in his mind, acrid and inflamed as a brand. _Han_ in her flowing copperplate, so flawless it was insult atop torture. _Do not call for me again. I will not see you._

Han came out of shock somewhere on the Nebraska steppes. Cracking the wax neck on a bottle. It was September, a rime of early frost at night, but his campfire was half-assed and his bedroll scant. Maybe he was trying to freeze to death. Not that Han felt the chill: Leia's absence hurt so much he felt burned at the stake, like he was some dusty prairie take on that window Pop bought for the church, the one Han had always hated. And as he shivered and didn't feel it, whiskey kindled another spark of resentment in Han's heart. One he stoked until it consumed, drove back his grief and guilt. By this harsh light, Han reckoned if his Princess could sack him so easy—Jesus, that vicious, perfect cursive!—she hadn't loved him at all. She'd been amusing herself with a commoner. Using him to measure her daring.

 _You are not the caliber of person I wish to know any further._

Bitterly Han toasted the coyotes lurking at the flickering borders of his camp. _Blast, can't blame her_. What, what could Leia—so beautiful, smart, classy—want with this big lug with his dopey reassurance—she could be certain of him? _Hah!_ Leia'd jumped at the chance to be shut of him. _I was Her Worship's feller for awhile, yeah,_ Han sneered at the scavengers, at the stars. Ignored Fix's troubled nicker at his master's fractured voice. _But I never, not for one second, had a shot in hell at bein' her man._

Now Han grabbed up the white shirt from his mattress. Not bothering with a singlet—the linen too fitted for it, and opaque enough to obscure the hair at his chest—Han slotted shell buttons into double-stitched slits. Softly cursed as he wrestled cuffs shut at his sturdy wrists. He preferred his sleeves rolled up, but some fine Yank suitor would—

"Get _you,_ birthday boy!"

Han turned, tucking shirt-tails into his open trousers. Robert stood in the doorway, parcel under his arm. At breakfast this morning, Pat also had a present for Han, wrapped in newsprint from the firebox: a panner's almanac, mail-ordered from California. And as Han grinned, genuinely touched, Robert—never one to be outdone—grandly said Han could take the next day off from harvest. Han cocked a brow at Pat and Pat winked back, awaiting the catch. But in Pop's old chair at the head of the table, Robert just kept chewing his flapjacks.

Strolling into the room, Robert waved at Han's snowy shirt and slim gray serge trousers, his tamed hair, painstaking shave. "She's already asked you?"

Han blinked. He hadn't told anyone of Leia's invitation, let alone Robert. But he was distracted, then, by Robert crossing the rag rug, holding out his gift. Wary as though it contained a rabid bat, Han stripped gilt wrap to a haberdasher's box. Inside that, nestled in delicate muslin, was a black cravat and white kidskin collar. Even to Han's unsophisticated eye, much finer than what Robert pressed upon him before the Howard party.

 _Always wanted a fancy noose,_ Han began to say, then bit his lip. Looked again.

When most young men had learned the rules of courting, Han was hired out to Sweetwater County, Wyoming (whatever Robert had had to do with that, Han forced himself as always to ignore). So it must have been coarse male error that drove Leia away. Barriers he'd clumsily bounded over in his eagerness to be close to her. Not just...like _that,_ but Han was old enough to accept some of what Pop said as fact: everything was rush, rush, fast with Han.

This time he'd be a gentleman.

Earlier today he'd sought Ma's advice, but when Han entered the bedroom she'd borne him in, Ma whispered from her pillow that she'd make his chips _in a little while, love_. He nodded hard—she hadn't called him _love_ since he was eight—and bent to press a kiss to Ma's sharp cheek. Thinking, with a pang of complicated affection, it was best he couldn't ask Ma's help: Pop had wooed her with the romance of a feed catalogue, and Han was living proof that Ma accepted.

Pat? Pat was trustworthy as the seasons, but never glanced up from book or fields long enough to notice a woman. Seemed to avoid 'em, even.

Robert, though. Robert's marriage wasn't what Han wanted for himself—despite their forty children, the couple only seemed to interact when gossiping about some poor sap—but Robert _did_ understand social rules. And what was it Robert said: _she already asked you?_ Robert was smart, right? He must have guessed where Han was going tonight, the woman Han sought to impress. Yeah, Robert had been a goat's ass at the contest yesterday, but surely he'd learned respect for Leia after her incredible performance. Couldn't this expensive tie, however fussy, be Robert's belated support of Han's hopes?

At Han's searching glance, Robert raised quizzical brows. Not mean, not sly; the welcome was brief, yet enough that Han recalled another big brother. A young man who, every rare while, did Han a favor. It was Pat who taught Han how to shoot, to string a fishhook, to build a fire. But it was Robert who pulled small Han back at the schoolhouse door on his first day, knelt to knot his loose bootlace.

"...thanks, Bobby." Han tried, eyes lowered. "Listen. I—"

"It's not from _me_ , blockhead."

Han looked sharply up, fraternal sentiment curdling into hard-taught caution. Rifling the muslin, Robert found a calligraphed card, thrust it at Han. The cloying scent of gardenia water identified the gift's true sender before Han read her dinner invitation, or her equally flowery signature.

"Day off on the morrow, remember." Gleefully Robert poked Han between the ribs. "So! Stay at Bright Oaks late as you—"

Shaking his head, Han had to laugh. Half exasperation, half relief to be freed from the delusion of trust. He tossed Eileen Howard's summons back in the box as though culling the joker from a fresh deck.

"Already got plans."

"A likely story." Chuckling, Robert reached to muss Han's careful hair. "Bit too spit-polished for Lucky's!"

"Ain't goin' to Lucky's," Han said, ducking his head, too riled to think better of his candor.

Irritation flickered Robert's short fair lashes. But he visibly controlled it. Opted for brotherly encouragement, all the more galling to Han because he had so nearly sought it.

"Right, I see." Almost gently, Robert took the box from Han. "You're afeared, to have a fine chance like Eileen set her cap for you. Especially when...another girl is, ehrm. A sure bet." He winked. "Well hell, baby, wild oats, easy fields! I do understand it." Robert tapped Han's shoulder with pastel cardboard as though dubbing a reluctant knight. "Think of Eileen as Lady Luck, Han. A little harder to win over, but she's your winning hand."

Robert puffed, expectantly pleased with his lecture. Han's stony silence persisted.

"Hey now. Buck up, man." Robert's smooth tenor sharpened. "A little late for you to play blushing maiden, after—"

Han jerked away, buttoning his trousers with spiky dignity, even a protection that extended beyond himself. As though, in her kitchen across Whiskey Knot, Leia could be rendered exposed and helpless.

Frustration warped Robert's avuncular mask. "What more could you possibly want? Eileen is fetching...rich,"

"That's what this is about? Still?" Curtly Han thumbed his suspenders up, one after the other. "You gettin' in good with the mayor?"

"Don't you see," Robert said wildly, "wed Eileen and you're set. No damn farming! You can gamble, drink: give her a child and you—"

"Christ!" Han's lips twisted in disgust. "Why don't you just shunt me out to stud?"

As Han pushed past him for the door, Robert slapped his own palm with the box, making Han recall the schoolmaster's strap. "Fine. Fine! Do what you like—"

"Always do, Bob."

"—but suppose Eileen hears whose company you're keeping tonight?"

Han's turn back to Robert was menacingly slow. Robert assumed his full height, not conceding that at twenty-nine Han was half a hand taller, never mind broader through the shoulders. Not tracking the way Han was stalking forward, lids heavy over leaden irises.

"It's illegal in Whiskey Knot for a man to be alone at an unmarried lady's residence." Robert shrugged. "Mayor Bill's order. Said it yourself, boyo: he's Eileen's father." His smile was regretful. "I'd hate people to think that wee hired girl was running a house of—"

"Like the Marigold Mile?" Han's smile was like sun off a scythe. It didn't touch his eyes. "Huh?"

"How dare—" Robert spluttered just before Han drove him into the wall, forearm axehandled across Robert's narrower chest. Perfumed box crumpled, fine tie and collar crushed.

"No." Han snarled into Robert's frozen face. "Not her. Not Leia."

Robert's croak was sickly. "I didn't mean—"

" _Not. Leia._ " Lupine grin becoming gritted teeth, Han ground the box into Robert's ribcage like one of the mayor's trademark cigars on his brother's flesh. "Unless you want me to come for your fuckin' throat."

Han released Robert into wheezing disbelief.

"Thanks for tomorrow off," Han spat. Left without looking back.

XXXXXXXXX

Leia peered into the open oven. Under the rack holding the enamel pan, thick cords of hickory burned steady and slow, ideal for roasting. The bird was smaller than Mayor Howard bragged, Leia had wryly noted as she stuffed it with herbs, onion, cubed bread. Closer to twelve pounds than fifteen, though it felt like a ton yesterday, in her aching arms. But smaller meant it should cook faster. Hours in, the kitchen was fragrant with thyme, rosemary, sage; the turkey should be nearly done, yet its buttered skin appeared bronzed in erratic patches.

It was her imagination, Leia decided, rising briskly from her knees, wrapping her hand in her apron to close the iron door with a muted clang. The turkey _wa_ s sizzling, surely its piebald color was mere trick of the light. Leia turned up the lampwick; her gaze slid to the potato chips, waiting on the counter in their ceramic bowl. They looked almost accusingly delicious, golden and finished as the turkey was not. Oh, those? Nothing to do with her, no: they'd simply grown there on their own, or so she'd tell Han Solo if he noticed. And he _would_ notice, judging from what Jane Solo had said at harvest about her youngest son's favorite treat.

 _It's his birthday!_ Leia had thought, flustered to discover what she'd done with the russets she'd planned to mash. _Why not be nice?_ Yes! This was acceptable risk. Leia would be nice to Han, tonight. No more, no less. Resentment belonged in the past, with the rest of the trusts and passions that once existed between them. Anger burned with its own volatile lust. But _nice?_ Even the word was mild and cool as milk.

Leia wasn't sure if it helped, this bargaining with herself as she salted the chips. On one hand, equivocation was offensive to her nature. On the other, it made for compelling distraction from her labor. And what Leia hadn't confessed to Han, when she made her impetuous invitation, was how profoundly she loathed the kitchen.

She hadn't hated cooking before, when she worked for his mother. Never _enjoyed_ it: joy was something other. Joy was childhood on gusty Boston Common, kite ripped from her grip and how Leia thrilled to see it escape, even as her palm smarted with rope-burn. It was learning to ride after the move west, fast Aldera a respite from grieving for Papa. Most of all Leia found joy in a particular set of angled lips. Whether Han's kisses were quick, silly pecks run like buttons all down her neck, broken by his chuckling; or a man's, oh deep, demanding, so full and ardent they bent her back, Leia loved them all.

Back in Boston—after she'd lost him; trying fruitlessly to lose him—Leia was placed on service waiver when Breha died. She'd maintained top grades, yet was forced to cook for the continued privilege of the scholarship issued her on merit, for the dormitory roof over her head. The college scullery was dingy, anonymous, exhausting. Worlds away from Jane Solo's sunny kitchen: her generous wages, practical lessons, impulsive hugs. Her extravagant leftovers and Irish songs.

After her shifts, Leia was too tired to effectively study. Her still-healing foot burned terribly. Yet, resistant to self-pity, Leia snorted when Luke said her lot was like the fairy tales they'd pretended as children. She'd only confessed her straits to him because she nodded off at his apartment and Luke thought she'd fainted.

 _I work_ _late, then I have classes._ _My grades are abysmal._ Leia said this on dismissive laughter, but Luke's expression was grave, gentle in the hearthglow. Again he requested to pay Leia's tuition. Again Leia felt in full her love for him and refused.

Leia bit her wine-flavored tongue, too, against telling Luke the news that the new anatomy instructor who inherited Breha's classes also took proprietary interest in Breha's daughter. Wanted dinner in his chambers, served by Miss Organa. She could not tell Luke this: Luke's kindness was tempered by lethal justice, and Leia looked out for herself.

She delivered Professor Smithee's dinner with a paring knife slipped in her pinafore pocket.

What she'd carried at the Marigold Mile was scissors. Scissors, when she went into the lounge to replace lacy antimacassars that shielded armchairs from hair-oil. Local politicians and burghers looked long at Leia, there; genteel licentiousness through cigar haze, but they didn't dare try her. There was something Leia felt radiating from her that kept these fine gentlemen at bay. She'd learned that firewall from Rouge; Rouge, whose palliative tonics Leia had to somehow afford. Rouge who would have risen from sickbed onto the rampage if she'd known her niece had taken the despised job she'd once held herself.

Han would have hated the Mile for her, too, Leia felt sure. She never told him she'd taken on its mending. This omission was not out of dishonesty or shame. It was as though the place existed in another dimension from him, irrelevant to their stolen time. Han was gratifyingly impossible to picture in that stuffy lounge, under portraits of bankers and mayors. Han who never greased his unruly hair. Han who played faro and snooker for cash, not whist and shuffleboard for votes. Han with huge hands wholesomely roughened from reins, gritty sand and chaff, not soft from shuffling paper; Han who would never hold a dollar to a candle just to see the waiter suffer.

Han, who didn't eye Leia up as though fingering a grubby deed of ownership. When he left her in the evenings, when she looked over her shoulder, Leia caught him watching. Caught Han leaning back in the gig, long leg braced on the dash, watching her from under his hat. His stare dreamy, starved, almost superstitious. Heavy-lidded, as though Leia were a wondrous figure, all made up of silvery light. And in those moments Leia felt both deeply known and like a marvellous mystery, even to herself. One for their shared solving.

Han. Her Han, a different kind of man.

She also never told Han about the Mile because his brother was a frequent visitor. Not big Patrick, shy and courteous, but Robert: slick of hair, slick of nature. Imperious as head of the Solo farm and the Solo table, but craven before the whims of rich, established club fellows. Not quite the money-burning boor, but servile audience to such sport.

To be fair, Robert Solo left Leia well alone at the Marigold Mile; he gave no sign that he saw her, let alone recognized her as his mother's hired girl. And it was _because_ she was Jane's hired girl that Leia knew Robert was married. Yet she saw him climb that ornate brass staircase like every other greedy member. To think Leia believed, back then, that Robert's behavior would upset Han, shame him.

Thankfully, Leia never encountered Robert on the yellow-papered upper floor, where she collected frayed pillowslips. But one evening, Daniel Townsend stepped out of a suite as she passed. Knotting his silk tie, deliberate and sinister as a hangman, Daniel looked Leia over, apparently not sated by what he'd just paid for. And not slowing her stride Leia smiled back, let the scissors in her palm reflect the gaslight lamp. Daniel's own smile faltered. He did not approach her.

Professor Smithee never touched Leia either. Perhaps he sensed it, the lesson in dissection Leia would give him if those roving eyes, those insinuations, ever gave way to fingers.

She hadn't liked college, even before. Her father always said Leia was bright as a torch, and that was true, but only she knew how academia numbed her. Leia had been studying to escape Han Solo and for love of her stepmother; she had no inherent ambition to be a doctor or teacher. Now Breha was dead, and Leia would become neither. But even now, freed from collegiate pressure, tension bit into Leia's shoulders when she cooked. Some embitterment that rendered her meals not merely unpalatable to Leia, but corrupted. What was the point of building finicky structures of wood and paper, monitoring the oven's iron innards, all for her own scant appetite? Mostly Leia ate small meals of cheese and bread, milk and fruit; eggs and oatmeal boiled on the wide, deep parlor hearth. Hung her teakettle there, and heated bathwater in a big copper pot she sat in the ashes.

Leia looked at the stove again. Its black belly was tinted dull red, but _was_ it as hot as it normally got? It was hard to tell, when she so rarely—

 _No. Stop._ This was an absurd attempt to contrive another task in which to situate tonight's skittishness. There was too much accomplished, that was the problem: near-five of the clock and the house scoured, peas shucked and ready for steaming, table clothed and set. Leia untied her grease-spotted apron, grateful for one last distracting project.

XXXXXXXXX

Leia meant to sit before the stove and let her hair dry as it might, then fix it softly up with her ivory combs. She didn't examine this notion closely, lest it reveal something about tonight's motives. Lest it recall a night-ride in the clipper, after the Christmas social: Han leaning close to tuck her under fur robes, to nestle heated rocks around her. Leia still able to picture him tending those stones in his mother's stove, biting his lower lip in that way he got. Planning, hoping to see her home.

Across her quilt, Leia draped a simple, pretty frock she'd recently completed. Dressmaking a task she didn't mind now that she wore what she liked. She'd found a cache of fabric in the attic, most tough and practical—denims, twills, corduroys—but some yardage was surprisingly delicate, aesthetic rather than utilitarian. For this pattern, which she'd altered to bare her collarbones, Leia chose a blush velvet, soft enough of hand to describe her shape.

Not that that mattered, Leia dismissed as she let her chemise float down over her bare chest—nervous or not, she would never go back to her corset—not that it was significant, that the dress flattered. Of no consideration to her, whatever sweet flush it brought her skin. Almost the pink of the rose on the _Sweetheart_ tin he got for—

No, no, it was all just clothes!

Leia almost believed this until, stepping into velvet, she glimpsed herself in the bureau mirror, collecting sunset from its opposing window. And Leia froze, staring at her loose hair, her figure backlit through sheer silk. This was the sight that once lit Han's eyes to embers, heating her more than those river stones in winter. Her own veiled nakedness, edged in westerly flame.

 _Birthday suit,_ Leia thought, before she could stop it. _Birthday gift._

Dropping the pink dress, Leia turned her back on that girl in the glass, damned past fool: dead, gone! How dare that ghost be so spendthrift yet, with the ruined heart of her present self? Princess velvets, delicate adornments in her hair? _Little idiot,_ Leia hissed. Idiot phantom, still seeking her lost man. The man who looked on her like a constellation.

Storming to her wardrobe, Leia snatched her plainest dress, the crispest of fabric and highest of neck. One she didn't make herself: this was the required uniform for service in the college dining hall. Leia buttoned white poplin to her chin, braided and pinned her damp hair so tight it stung.

Leia turned back to the mirror; in white she was prim and austere, cool and waxy. An unlit candle.

 _Be nice_.


	11. Fire 2

Han looked wrong.

Strange to think when he was so vivid, tanned with harvest sun, tall frame hard with harvest labor. Strange, for here was his chin, both cleft and scarred. Nose charmingly askew. Large calico eyes, level brows, slanted lips. His features added up to the same unique sum. The face Leia once held in her hands and even now found beautiful, albeit from necessary distance.

The wrongness was not in Han's person, but his dress. Shirt not easy cotton but white linen, stark as chalk, fastened to the neck. Cuffs bound to his wrists. Dark trousers, iron-pressed, not flexing with his thighs and hips in the natural way of his chamois. Black suspenders buffed glossy as his boots. Han's clothing was well-sewn and fitted, but made Leia think of playing with paper dolls as a child. She half-expected, as Han paused in the kitchen doorway, to see folded tabs affixed to trim waist and wide shoulders.

Han's thick brown hair wasn't oiled, thank the Lord. Leia couldn't have stood that, would have soaped him under the pump in the yard, muttering rites of exorcism. But his usual riot of cowlicks and whorls were tamed with forceful combing. And his whiskers, too, jaw shaved so closely it fairly gleamed in the lamplight.

This vexed Leia. Not as a matter of taste, though admittedly she'd been partial to his scruffiness. He'd appear perfect to anyone else. It took familiarity with Han to understand he bore formality with the comfort of a roped plains colt. To recognize that his smile was tight. To note that his fingers were tucked into his pockets only to the depth of his first knuckle—as though Han couldn't commit his hands to constriction, but was afraid to leave them unattended.

And the knowing him was the threat, the flaming arrow shot into Leia's fortified detachment. The knowing him could lodge in the starched breastplate of this hated dress, spark and spread. After all, why should she care how her...not-enemy looked, dressed?

What did she care, how Han Solo felt?

Leia also wondered, and wished she didn't, just how she looked to him.

XXXXXXXXX

Han had never been inside this house.

Not in any of those fall dawns he'd collected Leia, right outside the gate because a lift was allowed, and despite his private feelings there was nothing, then, between them to hide. And not when there _was,_ either, not in any of the evenings Han dropped Leia off out of sight, when she'd take his face in her hands and kiss him. Her lips only just alighting on his, all earlier fires banked for the night. _Sleep well, handsome._ And he'd scoff with poorly hidden pleasure, _ah, get on with you._ Mutter something like: _Lando says I got a mug like an odd number._

In Han's mind the house was Leia's aunt's, not hers. A stark structure, serviceable and charmless, it seemed to him a kind of prison, though his mother respected Rouge Antilles. The tall, strong woman nodded to Ma when they passed on the street, but always looked at Han with skepticism. By summer, though, Han asked Leia to meet Rouge, hoping to signal his seriousness. Leia said _not quite yet_. Han didn't press it: he was that foolishly happy then, and anyhow, he'd prove his seriousness about Leia soon enough—

Yeah, well. He'd never been inside the house.

He'd come nigh, when he rode Leia home from the Howard party. The heat between them so acute Han hadn't cooled that whole long night on her swing, guarding her gate. One boot up, other planted to the porch: flex of thigh, relax into the drift. Back and forth, still feeling Leia's warmth. Seeing her in that blue dress, tossing her dance card to the fire. Hours battling his urge to go inside. _Flex, relax._ Inside to where, Han somehow knew, Leia was awake too.

Leia didn't wear blue tonight. This dress was hard January white. Closely tailored from stubborn chin to tiny feet, Leia was lovely as ever, but with the carved opacity of a statue. Impossible to imagine Leia slitting this dress to fit herself to saddle, fit herself to his hips.

Not that a gentleman would imagine that.

Ducking slightly to follow Leia through the low doorway—this house much older than the Solo place, which Spence had built to accommodate his height—Han saw her braids had the plaited sheen of a horsewhip. More pinned than the velveteen cushion Ma kept next to her Singer. This hurt Han in some inexpressible way, to see Leia's dainty head bristling with tin. Quills turned inward, or out to him?

Leia stopped at the set table. Her huge eyes solemn. "Happy birthday."

"Thank you."

"I do hope it has been pleasant?"

"Work." Han raised his right palm, impression of husker-hook still visible there.

"Of course." Leia nodded. They regarded one another in sterile suspension. "Well." She smoothed her hands down her dress. "You must be hungry."

Han nodded back; it seemed to be the thing to do. "Good of you to, uh." He waved at the cool, spartan room and suppressed a wince: what, as though she'd assembled this kitchen in his honor?

She inclined her head. "Please, sit down." Leia moved to the old woodstove, stiff skirts brushing scrubbed flagstone.

Lowering himself to a spooled chair, Han folded his long legs under the table at staid right-angle. The room was compact, so Leia was not far, but she seemed worlds away. He floundered for something to say, something to reach her, but he was never a man for small talk. All that came to mind was ludicrous— _that_ _Robert, he's a real goat's ass_ —or dull— _so it turns out_ _a lotta bugs eat corn—_ or embarrassing— _Whaddaya think? I clean up nice?_

To think that talking with Leia used to be so easy. But the quiet good too, so good Han had understood why the sampler above Ma's dresser was embroidered, _silence is golden_. With Leia it was, on rides home, in their little hayfield chamber. Silence then like the setting sun, warm, generous, eternal.

This quiet felt brittle, endless. To endure it, Han reached to straighten the tablecloth. Lined fork and knife on napkin. One by one he took up the three squat, lit storm candles in the center of the table, cemented them with molten wax to their saucers. These tasks dispatched, Han stopped himself from tilting back in his chair. Didn't work his index finger under the seam of loosened wallpaper, there. Didn't unbutton his cuffs, this choking collar. Could not stop the sudden picture of getting up, crossing to Leia, and plucking pins from—

Han flattened his hands on the tabletop, where he could keep an eye on them.

Leia bent, dangling the oil lamp into the mouth of the oven like a miner peering into a shaft. The turkey looked pale, but its savory aroma was heaven, and Han's stomach gave a mute rumble. He'd worked all day, it was near six o'clock and he'd skipped Flo's mystery lunch in favor of sandwiches with Pat in the fields. Han had forgotten what it was like, a real roast supper, bread stuffing.

"I _am_ sorry. It's not finished." Frowning, Leia wiggled a drumstick. "I seem to have...planned this wrong." She planted a fist at her hip. "I've done this a hundred times, but—"

"Hey. No trouble." Han opened his arms. "I got hundreds _of_ time, so."

Now he did wince. Thankfully Leia's attention was on the bird.

Underneath the embarrassment, though, Han was relieved; when she went for the stove not five minutes after he arrived, he had the sinking feeling Leia would feed-trough him, send him on his way by seven. Her severe hair and dress, her stilted manner were that far from yesterday's wild and gorgeous winner. When the adrenaline of the contest wore off, Han suspected, Leia had rethought her impulsive invitation. Reframed it not as friendly overture but some private debt she meant to clear, then forget forever.

Leia closed the oven, straightened. Han used his sock foot to nudge the chair facing his from under the table. It seemed too strange, stagey, to pull a seat out for Leia in her own place. But Leia didn't join him. She folded the towels she'd used to shield her hands, placed them neatly on the counter. Then Leia scanned the kitchen with an almost panicked expression.

The silence loomed. That silence, should Han let it persist, carried him far too close to other thoughts he could vocalize.

 _Leia. Why?_

"I got cards," Han heard himself say instead. "In Fix's saddlebag. If you wanna play."

XXXXXXXXX

It was the gaudiest deck imaginable. Crimson-backed, reflecting the candlelight, each rectangle boasted an orange phoenix rising from blue flames. And as Han parted smooth cards with long fingers, then meshed them into shifting patterns, Leia observed something revive in him. Something corporeal, practical—yes, he was more Han-like by the minute: even his hair appeared to resurrect itself, springing free of its combed furrows.

Then, as Leia watched, Han absently slipped a finger into his collar. With one brusque jerk, he popped the button to bare his strong throat, then returned his hand to seamless shuffling. Something about that made Leia swallow. Something about the balance of that—Han's roughness set against his skill—made Leia feel both thrilled and at disadvantage. Suddenly the floor seemed tilted; lopsided as his grin, tipping her toward Han Solo's tangible arrival.

Leaving Leia clinging to the oven in this ghastly dress.

Perhaps that is why she said it: "Luke's are printed with bicycles."

Glancing up, Han coaxed whispers from the cards, then set them to rapid rhythm. Eyeing Leia all the while in that way he had, that shielded keenness. He didn't speak.

"He uses cards to read futures," Leia continued.

With a flash of teeth Han leaned forward in his seat, plunked the cards face-down on the tablecloth. Placing two fingers on the back of the deck, he fluidly stroked the cards into a fortune-teller's arc. Han arched a brow at Leia: it seemed to say, _Come_ _try your luck._

Hands tightening on the counter behind her, as though for purchase, Leia stared back.

"Well," Han said lightly, after a beat. "Good for a kid, to have a party trick." Sweeping the cards together, Han hit them level with the heel of his hand. Three quick taps: something beckoning about that, too, like a crooked finger. " _Luke_ bring you anything useful from the Great Beyond?"

Chin set, Leia moved to the tall cabinet. Rose on her toes.

"Just this."

Her tone was light as Han's had been, but Leia set the amber bottle, full three-quarters, on the table before him with authoritative weight. Han's eyes widened, even as something tautened in his jaw.

Luke had clearly been a guest here. Han had not.

Han _had_ asked to visit. Asked one Sunday after they'd separately escaped the church potluck supper, unable to squander any balmy June together. Walking beside Fix, Han met Leia by the curve of river behind her house. Leia supposed she would always see it, the flare of Han's smile to spy her coming down the meadow slope. He swung her up to saddle, settled himself close and they meandered in light that melted into flaxen grass. Air laced with flowers: Prairie Smoke. Blazing Star. With his long arms around her, Fix at a slow, rolling stroll, Leia was almost asleep against Han's chest when he murmured in her ear.

 _Uh_ _Princess_. _Couldja_ _slow down?_ Han steered her hands, his urgency comical at this drowsy pace. _Gee. Haw!_ Fix snorted in scorn as he stopped to graze, and Leia laughed herself awake.

But their glee at playing hookey soon spooled into another silence. This one fragile and temporary as the violet sky, and Leia felt Han wanted to break it. Something in his heart quickening under her ear, the way he rested his chin on her head. She felt him open his mouth, close it.

Leia couldn't see Han's face, but when his voice moved through her, it was low and earnest. _I'd like to come in. Meet your aunt._ He waited; when Leia did not answer, Han's chin shifted. She knew he was looking in the direction of the Antilles house. _Not_ _for_ tea _, Sweetheart._ _Just wanna see you to your door at night._

But Leia demurred. While Rouge accepted Leia working for the Solos, she didn't approve of the rides supplied by _that wastrel._ She would never welcome Han as Leia's beau. The woman wasn't cruel—just hellbent on Leia escaping all things Whiskey Knot, including Rouge herself, her failing health. _I won't have you_ _be_ _my nursemaid, child,_ Rouge snarled when Leia suggested postponement of her scholarship. _Nor my undertaker._

Why must Leia make worry for her aunt, dying with characteristic lack of sentiment? Plot all staked out in the churchyard, next to Meredith's; Rouge had paid Reverend Blair for it like she was packing a carpetbag for a trip. Leia did not want to add to Rouge's baggage. Wasn't it best to carry on like this with Han, blissful in the gloaming, harming no one, and leave together at the end of August? She would have asked him to Boston by then.

She said none of this to Han at the time. Just _not yet_ and Han didn't protest, but then, he didn't press her for anything she didn't want herself. And it struck Leia now, watching cards flicker and crackle in Han's huge hands, how she'd censored emotional detail from that memory. The halting rumble of Han's request against her back, Leia's own sense of what it meant. That he wanted to openly court her, yes—and further, that it troubled him to keep secrets. How did that man fit with what happened later? With what Rouge said after it was all over, as she kissed Leia goodbye? She spoke no comfort to her white-faced, devastated ward; Rouge's worldview allowed no palliatives, just bald truth. _Boy's no good._ _It's better to know._

But what _did_ Leia know? Across the table his face gave nothing more away. Yet she could not ask, not now, not on his birthday: _Han._ _How could you?_

Han hoisted the bottle to peer at its label. "Kid's got money to burn," he muttered darkly, and knocked back his draught all at once, as though to savor the scotch would be deference.

Leia raised her own glass and Han watched, evergreen eyes reflecting candlelight. Like a forest fire, she thought.

"Watch out," Han drawled, swivelling the deck in one upraised hand, thumb firm and precise. "This is a step past elderflower cordial, Miss."

Ignoring his gibe—she had always vocally loathed the sickly ladies' tipple—Leia neatly swallowed her scotch. Closed her eyes to feel it roll through her: such good heat, peaty and deep.

"Damn, woman." Han gave a low whistle. "You learned me at shooting. You mean to learn me at drink?"

Smiling sweetly, Leia poured more whiskey. "Maybe you can learn me at cards."

"Maybe I— _maybe?_ "

She shrugged and lifted her second measure. Sipped this time, looking evenly at him. Eyes narrowing above glass rim, Han quaffed half his dram and set the tumbler down with an aggressive click.

"You're on."

He sucked scotch from the inside of his cheek as he dealt. Then demarcated the table with the deck's remainder, sorted his hand into rapid shape. As Leia clumsily ordered her own cards, Han was left with time to splay his knees and push back in his chair, tilting it on its two rear legs. Leveraging his weight to sway, with presumptuous grace, between lip of table and flowered wall.

Still lazily rocking, Han folded his arms across his chest, cocked his head. "Y'ever... _play_ poker?"

Leia kept her eyes on her cards and her face empty. She was accustomed to her brain operating nimbly, with a minimum of outside instruction at any number of subjects. Surely some game of chance would be no exception. Yet she was all fingers and thumbs; these reds and blacks, these foolish figures! But stubbornly, Leia held her tongue.

Eyes still on her, Han popped a card like a blade from his palm—the eight of hearts, Leia saw, knew he _let_ her see, smug bastard—and dragged the edge along his jaw. There was a faint rasp, and Leia wondered: was this more evidence of scoundrel overtaking gentlemanly double?

Leia sighed. She'd maintained her bluff of proficiency as long as she could, especially with the knowing grin crawling up the side of Han's face. "What is it the queen does?"

" _The_ queen?" Han knocked his sheaf of cards shut against his palm. "It ain't chess, Swee—" He caught his lower lip between his teeth. "Leia."

She lowered her fanned hand just below her eyes, her gaze more a bandit's than a coquette's. "We _can_ play chess, if you'd rather."

"Oh yeah?" Han lifted his brows. "You wanna beat my ass down the street at that, too?"

Leia lifted her tumbler, rolled rich scotch around her tongue. Han watched with a hybrid expression she'd never seen from him—a fixation, but a lazy one. Like a lion, big and tawny and contained. Curious, but on his own terms.

 _Not enough,_ Leia thought in nonsensical but intense flash, as her veins warmed with malt, bloomed to the will of her heart.

"I didn't beat you down the street."

"'Course not," Han's eyes creased above his smile. "Just across the field and into the damn trees."

"It was very close, Han. You could've won just as easily."

"Nah." Han huffed a laugh into his whiskey, clouding the glass. "Reckon I never would, with you."

"You're winning now," Leia said, quietly.

Han's smile turned gentle, even slightly sad. Then he dropped his eyes from hers, dropped his chair abruptly to the floor. "Listen. We gotta play for something." Han drummed the table with his fingers. "Don't suppose...Luke, left any poker chips?"

XXXXXXXXX

Leia smiled as she came back to the table. Triumphant, but not in the new, ruthless way; no, in that _old_ way, that soft and mischievous way. The way that once said, across a long church table, _meet me in the meadow_ _in half an hour._ It was in how Leia bit her rosy lips, the way her lashes lowered. Or maybe that was trick of the light, cast from the storm candle in Leia's left hand.

But there was no mistaking what filled the bowl she set before Han.

"Will these chips do?"

Han was speechless so long that Leia finally spoke. "I thought."

"How'd you," was all he managed, before his throat tightened. And that was best, for he was unable to finish even the idea of this, to connect the dots between past and present. _Present._ Every year since he could remember, when he was home, they were his gift from his mother. How did she...Leia had helped at harvest, but they'd never spent a fourth of October together.

"Jane," Leia said, her eyes on the bowl. "A story she told me. Something funny: a nickname, your birthday...?"

Right. Han remembered that. The day he turned a gangly twelve, ravenous with growth, Han ate so many chips that the lips he already considered embarrassingly plump swelled and reddened, irritated by salt. Until Han looked like, Robert said, a lip-rouged trout on stilts. Pat laughed so silently and hard he put his head down on the table, Ma hid her own giggles in her handkerchief, and even Pop chuckled as he lectured Han on the sin of gluttony.

Not a bad memory. Happy, actually, Han realized. Dazedly shaking his head, he ran his fingertip along the ruffled edge of a truly perfect potato chip. Even beyond knowing, there was doing. There was intention. Leia knew the chips were special to him and took the trouble—

Han chanced a look up at Leia, still standing at his shoulder. She looked back before she shied, pinkening under the shifting wash of flame. For such a daring soul, not daunted by anything he could imagine, Han saw then that Leia _was_ made bashful, now, to be caught at softness.

He blew out a breath. Blamed the drink on an empty gut for the stinging in his eyes. To distract himself, Han wrapped his hand around the flashy deck of cards, so tightly the sharp edge felt hot.

This deck was, of course, Lando's taste. Lando's choice. Bought for Han in Dubuque after Chewie and Lando caught him chucking his own set of cards (also marked with bikes, though Han would never now admit that) one by one at his upturned hat. Not _saying_ it, but the meter of Han's tosses was obvious: _she loves me. She loves me not._

It was so embarrassing, Han would've preferred to be caught with his hand in his pants. Not that he was much inclined to _that,_ with his dumb heart too broken to beat.

 _Oh no. None of that mess,_ Lando said. _Don't you bring us down none of that._ And Chewie collected Han's cards, all those withholding aces and jacks, and hurled them into the campfire. _Bad luck, man,_ Lando insisted, implacable and dimpled, when Han raged around camp. Chewie calmly nodded, massive arms folded. _We must_ _burn it out._

Leia lifted the saucer, held it out to him. "Make a wish." That softness remaining in her face, vast eyes searching his. Still Han did not trust himself to speak. Trusted nothing he could say aloud.

But he trusted _her,_ suddenly; trusted Leia with his truest, deepest desire. Han had never stopped loving her, but trust in Leia hit him all at once in a dizzying rush. A force that could express itself in only the smallest breath between his rounded lips. _You_. Closing his eyes, Han aimed this adamant wish toward the flame in Leia's hands. _You, Sweetheart._


	12. Fire 3

Han leaned back in his chair, hands dragging along his thighs. Lips still bowed, he cast veiled eyes up at Leia. Something unspoken, twining in the thread of candle smoke between them, put Leia in mind of the overnight train out of Bridal Falls. Small young woman in the deserted steerage car, scrawling by shuddering gaslight. Pencil tearing through the foolscap in her lap, marking her skirt with dirty divots.

Leia frowned down at the spent candle-dish. She'd have burned that first letter to Han Solo, had she matches. Used the ashes as proof of all that had not shown on her white, drawn face.

"What did you wish for?" She tried for flippancy. It came out a whisper.

Gold, probably. Silver. A winning streak at faro; a penny assortment of every female flavor. And when Leia looked up from the charred wick it was fast, as though to catch Han at some trick. Those clever fingers at sleight of hand, between her buttons. To steal back her heart, slip it into his hat-band for luck. But meeting his half-lidded, amber eyes, it was herself Leia caught unawares. Caught her breath in her throat: how was Han still _so_ damned...

Leia had often heard local females describe the youngest Solo son as handsome. Even Rouge had said so, though she'd observed it darkly, as though Han's appearance was yet more evidence of deficient character. And from a distance, Leia had agreed—he _was_ pleasing to look at, that tall young man swaggering the high railing outside the saloon. But when Leia grew close to Han, she realized there was a distinction. The people of Whiskey Knot said _handsome_ of him,and they were wrong, though Han's hard jaw, fine smile and broad shoulders were reliable markers of the notion. For handsome applied to many men: the glib travelling vendor, romantic vaudevillians. The brooding hero drawn on the pulpy pages of mail-order women's papers. Handsome was empty, perfect. Bland.

 _Han_ was beautiful.

Beautiful was myriad. Beautiful _allowed for._ Beautiful was bent bridge of nose and corded scar under Leia's fingers, lips; even the way his mutable eyes screwed up into slits when he was angry. Beautiful was the soft snuffling sound when Han both laughed and kissed her. He was a handsome stranger when he loped up Silver Street to save a horse from an abusive rover, but he became _her_ Han, beautiful Han, when he got up: over and over, dusty and bleeding and radically gentle. Handsome was the illustration of a cocky local sniper; beautiful was yesterday, rough and fair with her, tearing off his hat in frustration. Yet unable to suppress exultation for Leia's success, even as it meant his public failure.

Rouge had been ironically right—to Leia, Han's beauty did reveal his character, or it had seemed so, once. Or one informed the other. And looking down at that man now—scarred chin tilted up, gaze heavy and unbreaking, askew lips slightly parted—oh, how Leia wanted to believe that again, because Han Solo remained so lovely to her.

When she was a tiny child, Leia had been fascinated by the firescreen in her father's study. Delicate bronze scrollwork, it seemed a manifestation of light itself. _Byzantine, Lelila,_ Papa said, noting her interest. He was the kind of father who spoke to his small daughter as though she was his fellow intellectual. _Byzantine,_ Papa told her. Not _hot,_ not _do not touch._

And so at near-three, Leia clutched the screen. It was so beautiful. She couldn't resist it.

How she'd screamed. Repeatedly bawled the real word at her father, reproachful. The one he'd omitted: _Danger._ _Danger!_ He held her, consoled her, fetched salve and gauze to treat her. But no, Bail had not told her, for the universe was vast and perhaps he had known one day he would leave her alone in it, reliant upon only herself. _All knowledge has value._ And in fact the lacy pattern seared into Leia's fingers occupied a vague yet compelling place in her memory. Occurred to her whenever she saw sailors on leave in Boston. Faces like maps of their travels, puckered lines from blades and broken bottles, circular cigar burns. The crude, fascinating inkings to women's honor: on one arm, _Mother._ On the other, a chain of bare-breasted lovers.

Perhaps, Leia thought now, her long-healed fingers tingling to read that ridged line on Han's upturned chin—just one more time!— all scars were proof of pursuit. Some primal consequence of wanting.

 _Oh, danger,_ Leia thought, with the thick urgency of dreams, to find herself standing between Han's open knees. Liquor all along her veins, stringing them alight, gold and hot as his gaze on her face. _Danger._ She was too close to him, and his scent just the intoxicating same it had always been, leather, cedar soap, clean male salt. Tang of whiskey, now, bite of candlesmoke.

Han lifted his large hands to frame her waist. For a moment Leia thought Han would grip her there as he had in the hayfield when she claimed his lap as her mount, pull her forward, lower, to settle firmly astride. Pressing his forehead to her shoulder a desperate moment, his breathing taut and eyes shut, grasping for the last of his discipline. Well Leia recalled how she'd tried to strip that control from him: with a searching series of kisses, with her arms looped as loosely at his neck as her stockinged thighs were ride-tight at his hips. Well Leia remembered how nearly Han had let her, his grateful, warning rasp to her, to God as she bore closer, against the length and breadth of him through his trousers. Bid him with her nudge of inner knees to buck up against her. Han obeyed, once, twice, hard and helpless under her skirts before he'd jerked Leia tight and close to him and rolled her over. Eyes fierce and tender, shaking his head. Kissing her brows, freckled nose, lips, jaw, neck before subjecting her to his own explorations. And eagerly Leia allowed them. Because then it seemed power was something they forged between them, intricate and searing as that firescreen.

But Han didn't touch her, in the kitchen. She looked down to see his hands hover, level with her hips, instinctively curved to fit her shape. Han's silence so heavy that when Leia looked back up, she almost gasped at the pained weight of his gaze. He held her eyes and licked his lips, took another breath. This one broader, deeper, than for his birthday candle. As though for some plunge into himself.

"Leia—"

With a _whumpf_ from the oven, a larger fire went out.

XXXXXXXXX

"Gasket's shot."

Even by the limited glow of lamplight and hickory coals, Han could see the rope seal lining the woodstove was badly frayed. He rattled a porcelain lever.

"Damper's rusted, too."

Rising from his crouch Han glanced curiously at Leia, tending to the roasting pan on the counter. He was no foundryman, but Han knew these weren't problems that arose overnight.

Leia said quietly, "I don't often use the oven."

It should have sounded odd, to Han. Always primed, even in summer, Jane Solo's stove was more circulatory organ than hunk of iron. But Han knew what Leia meant, knew himself how it was done, living spare. Living alone. The scant dishes to wash. Clothing boiled over a campfire or rented-room hearth; bathwater, too. And somehow it fit with this kitchen, scrubbed pale as any animal skull, it fit with Leia's stark, rigid dress—even that antiseptic letter she'd sent—that there could be no heat, here. No heart. No _mess._

Leaning over Leia at the counter, Han dangled the lamp above her head, so she could work. Shooting his proximity a look pointed as her carving fork, Leia pierced the turkey's breast. The meat ran pink in the flickering light.

She put the utensil down with controlled delicacy. "If we rebuild the fire," Leia said, "will..."

Han grimaced. "Doubt it'll keep lit."

Leia glared at the turkey so hotly Han thought she might well cook it through with fury. "Then I'll—I'll throw it. _To the coyotes."_

He gave an incredulous bark. "Naaaah, c'mon! Your prize?" Extending his free hand, he nearly touched Leia's shoulder; just in time, he transformed the gesture into forestalling spread of fingers. "That ain't like you."

Those eyes crackled into his. "Maybe it is."

"Pssshh. Know you better'n—"

"Maybe it is like me." Leia bit out the venomous addendum: "Now."

Han swooped low, all set to hiss: _You_ jilted _me,_ _Princess!_ But her face stopped him. Leia's face, turned defiantly up to his as though daring him to look upon what he'd done. And shame sparked in Han. Shame to know it, face it, how swiftly he'd let his own grief and bitterness consume his terror for Leia's safety. After what was wrought upon her that sweltering afternoon he'd sought to bring her only love, joy, pleasure—after seeing, as recently as yesterday, how Whiskey Knot yet reacted to her—Han still had the gall to pity _himself._

 _Plumb selfish,_ Pop muttered from somewhere and for once Han didn't outrun it, the old man's judgement. Hell, he'd earned it. Finally ready, on his twenty-ninth birthday, to take his father's blunt prescription: _Boy, better fix what you fucked up._

"Alright. You're right." Han set down the lamp, poured them each another shot. Leia sipped hers distractedly; Han slugged his for nerve. She'd gestured at their shared history, but she _could_ throw him out with the quarter-raw bird for making it audacious. "Been a spell since we kept close company—"

Over the rim of her glass, Leia's eyes widened.

"—but reckon I still know you some. How 'bout yesterday, huh?" Han's heart raced, but he kept his expression casual. "That _now_ enough?"

"I." Leia touched her hair, as though to reassure herself it was contained. "I appreciated your sportsmansh—"

"Ahhh, you know t'weren't that." With a remorseless smile Han popped one gentlemanly cuff, then the other. "I wanted your fight. You wanted mine. God knows we both gave it." He studied her as he rolled up his right sleeve. "No quarter. _That's_ like you, Leia."

Was it Han's imagination, or did Leia's eyes soften? Brighten?

"Listen," he said. "We need another plan."

"What do you mean?"

"We?" His eyes wide and innocent, Han waved between them. "Meanin', you and me." His fingers went back to rolling, his stare on hers, lip only just twitching at its slanted peak. "Us."

"I ask, _sir,_ " Leia shot back, "about the plan."

Han finished his cuff in a spendthrift flourish. "Trust me."

Leia clapped the back of her hand to her lips to keep in her scotch, delicate nostrils flaring. Her suppressed mirth stung; that Leia wanted Han to know it, her scorn for his worthiness. But Han smothered his defensive urge before it could leap to his tongue, quick and hot, reduce their evening to smoking wreck. Coaxing himself from his own hostilities as he once had Fix— _easy, now, easy_.

"Hey," he said. "Weren't a trap yesterday, right? When I backed you for the contest. Not like you th—"

"Who claimed I thought _that?"_ Leia said, on another laugh, this one too fast to be natural.

"I woulda, were it me." Han said. "Matter of fact I'm not sure what _you're_ runnin' on _me,_ tonight, but here I am, Leia. Right? So g'wan. I gave you a shot, you gimme mine."

She cocked her head. "What do you have in mind?"

"What do _you_ have to lose?" Han rebutted.

"To you? Not one thing."

Like a cat o' nine tails, Leia's whipcrack retort was laced with several cutting meanings. But Han refused to acknowledge that it bit into his back at just the points her small fingernails once had.

"Alright. Tell you what," Han said, moving to the back door. "Meet me outside, if it please you." He pulled on a boot, looked up, smirked. "But I'm takin' the bird."

"I won that fair and square!"

"Yeah, well. Be careful who you invite into your house."

Now her laugh was real. Now Leia's lush eyelashes fluttered in that way they got, when she was excited and trying to hide it. Her eyes were big on Han's and—yes, they _were_ shining, intrigued. Desiring.

She raised her drink, toasting him. "Okay, Hotshot," Leia said, and drained it.

XXXXXXXXX

As Leia inched through cool October dark, quilts in her arms, flames burst from the bare side garden. Fire so sudden that Han seemed to summon it to reveal himself to her, on his knees in the dirt. Making Leia remember a travelling magician she'd seen with Luke, at a theater on Tremont Street. They'd gone only as a curiosity—or rather, _Leia_ had, Luke was open by nature to the fanciful. But when the solemn woman in black tuxedo opened her palms, filled with green flame, it was Leia, not Luke, who gasped. Not so much shocked by the hoax, but to find herself transfixed by it.

And turning to take in what Han had put together, Leia couldn't quite believe that, either. The rectangular length of cheesecloth torn at the corners and stoutly bound—like any illusionist, Han was deft with knots—to four long poles. These driven deep into loam at equidistant points, braced with rocks. The turkey gently swinging in this gauzy sling, both in and above the fire, already merrily hissing.

Han rose, tilted smile boastful under hopeful eyes. Like _he_ was the host tonight and Leia, the guest. Well, Leia decided, Han had rights to both anxiety and pride. In the brief time she'd remained inside the house, Han had raided her garden of frost-cloth, beanpoles, weightstones. Sacked the last of her hickory store, and Leia low on money and on the lip of winter. He'd wrangled her prize turkey into a hammock!

Dazedly Leia lowered the bedding clutched to her chest, revealing her change of clothing: woolen wrap over simple sprigged housedress, worn supple from time and washing. The shawl knit for Leia by Jane Solo, given to her the night of the Christmas social. The humble, pretty frock, flowers on cream cotton, Leia used to wear working in the Solo kitchen. Remembered how her quiet, long-legged driver used to track her progress in it.

Han remembered it, too. His smile fading, he stared until Leia felt her own flush sweep like brushfire up her long, bared throat. But she stared back, chin pugnacious, daring Han to look into her mind. Find, there, the picture of them together in the Solo hayfield. Han softening this cloth with his mouth. Leia wriggling at the tickle of his whiskers. _Scoundrel,_ she'd teased, dragging her palm against Han's prickly cheek. Tugging playfully at his thick, unruly hair until with a mock-stern huff Han laced Leia's hand with his, pinned her knuckles to the chaff. Fingers caressing hers, rough thumb stroking her palm until it curved _._

 _Nah. I'm sweet,_ Han murmured,pressing solemn, open kisses to every blossom printed on her calico. _A honeybee, Princess._ _So lemme work._

Leia hadn't spoken back. She hadn't been able to, then. She'd just watched, breathing and disbelieving, as Han travelled lower, petal to petal. Lips, tongue and fingers finding every flaw in her whaleboned armor.

 _No. You're a wolf,_ Leiashould have insisted. _You mean_ _to eat my heart._

And indeed, his face cast in darkness and firelight both, Han looked half-hungry, half-cursed. His eyes scorching into hers. Well, Leia thought, if her frock pained him, he was welcome to blame himself. For it was Han who had chosen, as she'd gathered bedding, to call up to her open window from the garden.

 _Fetchin' your rifle, Miss?_

Leia had glimpsed his tall silhouette below, moving in moonlight. The leggy motion so deliberate, yet his action so opaque to her, it looked as though Han were pacing.

Waiting _._

AndLeia felt the powerful urge, then, emboldened by whiskey but genuinely hers, to escape her hateful serving dress. A recklessness akin to the final shedding of her corset: a pressure to live, to freely move. A growing beyond propriety and protection.

It was also an aggression. This prim dress was no way to disarm him, the prowling creature under Leia's window, lurking in the skin of the man she'd loved. Luring her into moonlight with false endearments. _Miss._ Oh, had he been hungry without her, poor neglected creature? Bid him eat that sly address! Why must he insist on using it yet? How could he be decent one moment, yet keep such distance? Keep such secrets?

What had happened to Han Solo's sweetness?

Whoever he truly was, predator or earnest supper guest, opponent or former lover, Han goaded Leia. His presence pushed her beyond what she expected from herself. _Trust me,_ he'd said, in the kitchen, closing in to kissing closeness, and the worst of it was Leia _wanted_ to: wanted to kiss him, wanted to trust. This uniform had felt like necessary resistance, earlier, against such impulse. But now Leia knew it was no way to arm herself—against that voice, against such tricks! Against whatever summons Han may try yet: _Sweetheart._ _Princess._

 _My rifle? Yes. Loaded with silver, Shapeshifter._

Not turning from the window, Leia yanked her starched bodice apart. Shell buttons biting into her palm, bee-sting. Like the burn of string when her kite escaped. Brisk air through her filmy chemise declared the risk should Han look up to the glass. And if the man had blown out a birthday candle, would the wolf blow down the house? Just to take her in his arms again, in his mouth?

She didn't find out. Han remained bent on mysterious effort in the dark. Work that had ruined his fine attire, Leia saw by the warm light of his labors. Trousers pitted and gritty at the knees, scuffed suspenders slung at his hips. White shirt streaked and crumpled, half-unfastened to gleaming chest, sleeves rolled loosely up his forearms.

As Leia spread old quilts next to the bowl of chips, tumblers, bottle of scotch, as she settled on the patchwork, Han watched in hazy torture.

Leia looked expectantly up at him. He did not join her on her quilt. In fact, Han abruptly turned his back, walking out of the flickering circle of firelight—Leia almost called to him before she heard the shriek of metal. He was working the water-pump. Han came back dampened and smelling of her own soap that hung on a chain from the arch of the handle. As he walked he sluiced his face with the blade of one hand, carrying the filled tin drinking pitcher with the other. He'd washed under his shirt, Leia could tell by its transparency at chest and underarms.

"You'll catch your death."

Stopping short at the edge of her hand-stitched island, Han hitched one shoulder. Running a damp hand through his hair, so utterly spoiling its earlier tidiness that Leia felt an absurd satisfaction. "Been a sight colder than this. Fire'll dry me soon enough." He sucked droplets of water from his upper lip. "Anyroad. Can't sit down to supper indecent."

But he still didn't sit. Leia didn't embarrass him with reassurance, or herself with the admission that she'd always loved his natural smell, heightened by work. She simply took up the bowl of chips, chirruping at Han like he did to Fix, calling the horse to his bran mash.

For a moment Han gaped down at her. Then he chuckled, lowering himself amid the quilts. Leaning back on his palms as though putting his long body on show, all uncertainty vanished or maybe masked—unless, Leia reminded herself, shyness _was_ the mask, and this crafty combatant the actual man.

Han angled an expectant brow at Leia. "You feed Fix right outta your hand."

"Fix and I are friends," Leia said.

Flashing an appreciative half-smile at her tart response, Han dug into the bowl, slotting three stacked chips into his mouth. As he chewed, his expression changed again, from slyly amused to stricken: brows buckling, he closed his eyes, dreamily shaking his head. His rapture filled Leia with unreasonable gratification.

To avoid examining that, she bit into a chip herself. It _was_ good, crisp yet resistant, salted just right. And the taste of food, however insubstantial, reminded the pair that their bellies were empty of all but whiskey. They ate in ravenous silence until the small bowl was empty.

"Oh _my_ god," Han sighed, at last.

Leia hid her smile in her tumbler, drained of whiskey now, filled with water. "Blasphemer."

"Ahhh." Elbows slung on his upraised knees, Han spoke out of the corner of his mouth. Looking not at Leia but at the stars, veiled, then revealed, by drifting smoke. "You've heard me blaspheme before."

Actually, Han had done his best not to curse or blaspheme in Leia's presence. Not that it would have offended her; Breha was a quiet non-believer and Rouge swore like a ranger. But—perhaps Han was projecting some idealized idea of suitor, then, to distract her, while the wolf padded closer.

Leia baited him further: "When?"

Han didn't answer, but he didn't flinch, either, peripherally flicking his eyes to her dress. His grated _Sweetheart,_ _sweet_ _lord, Jesus_ as she arched on that other patchwork quilt flashed through Leia as though wired to her from the past. Filling her with prickly heat, to think on the way Han made impiety reverent, yet smutty as soot. A huge hand braced at the small of her back, the other roaming. A chaste kiss for each bluebell on her dress. For the posies, humid humming worship spiked with soft closure of teeth. And at the wild roses, he—

Leia gestured desperately at the suspended bird. "Have you done _this_ before?"

"Yeah, I..." With equal urgency, Han gulped water, dragged the back of his hand across his lips. "Well, Chewie did, coupla times, when I bagged a grouse." He waved at the turkey, rapidly browning in its net. "Never fowl big as this. Or stuffed, but. What do we have to l—"

He stopped speaking so abruptly Leia winced, so clearly was Han wary of provoking another lacerating comment on the subject of loss. _Who's_ _ **we,**_ _Solo,_ maybe. But Leia didn't say it— _be nice, be nice_ —and they lapsed into stiff quiet. All at once nothing seemed safe to look at: not the stars, not their own hands, not one another. So they watched the fire, the only focus not laden with shared memory.

"Forgot the cards in the house..." Han finally muttered.

"There was a game I used to play," Leia ventured, at the same time. Against her better judgment, but compelled.

Han looked at Leia, raising his eyebrows.

"One party asks questions, the other answers."

"Or what?"

"Or you do a trick. A dare." Leia smiled. "Once, I made Luke walk—"

"Luke." Han looked impassively back at the fire. "Ol'...Luke."

"Yes, _Luke._ Skywalker, even. We've been friends since we were children."

"Friends huh." Han turned on his hip to face her, leaning on a braced arm. "That the same as not-enemies?"

"No," Leia said.

Han studied her an interminable while; she didn't crack. She may be no hand at cardplay, but she was a natural at poker mask. And finally Han leaned back, a slow smile wreathing his own face.

"You're a hard woman, Leia Organa."

Leia shrugged, shawl slipping down one shoulder. "Are you in, or out?"

"All in," Han said promptly. "Hit me."

"Very well. I heard tell you have a nickname?"

Han nodded gravely. "The Scoundrel of the Plains," he stage-whispered, sweeping an arm at the meadow. "Some say, on a night very like this one, he—"

"Rather more prosaic, I should think," Leia said, determinedly ignoring the invocation of _scoundrel,_ of long, shielding grasses. "Something about you and...potato chips?"

Theatrically Han spluttered water. "Nickname? _Me?_ No. Nuh-uh,"

Leia's lips twitched. "Odd. Your mother said—"

"Stone liar, my Ma. Stone liar. Lyin' Jane Solo, that's what they call _her._ "

The thought of Han's bright, industrious, indomitably optimistic, kindly mother being known around Whiskey Knot as an inveterate con almost made Leia break—though local citizenry _could_ surely be so perverse, once a rumor took hold.

"Perhaps I'll ask Patrick." Leia mused to the night. "I am sure to see him in town, on occasion."

"Hard _woman,"_ Han marvelled, grin broadening. Reaching for the whiskey, he mumbled something unintelligible into his shoulder.

"What was tha—"

"Kissy-fish! Alright? It was Kiss—"

Leia heard her own laugh burst from her chest, surprising and bright as the bonfire had been. "I beg your—"

"You don't beg for nothin'." Han tapped his mouth. "Swole up. Salt."

" _Kissy-fish."_ Leia giggled into her hands. "How long did you answer to that?"

Han watched her indulgently, his hair tossing in the rising breeze. "Ain't it my turn?"

Biting her lip, Leia nodded queenly concession. "By all means."

He swirled his whiskey. "Who learned you to shoot?"

"My aunt Rouge."

"Now I mean no disrespect, mind. But...why? Ain't that rare? A lady, shootin'?"

"My turn," Leia said.

" _My_ birthday," Han volleyed.

"Perhaps for women shooting's not sport. It's necessity."

Han squinted at her, and for all the things she could no longer be sure of about him, Leia knew his genuine confusion.

"A cattle rancher sought to wed me."

Han's expression darkened. "What? _When?"_

"I was sixteen." Leia didn't say it, not _before you._ "It vexed Rouge."

"I'll say. Enough to get out a gu—"

"It was either that or to teach me to wield her hatchet."

"Over a proposal?"

"He arrived on that porch." Leia pointed. "A stranger to me, a man into his forties, and sought to take me home that evening." Leia felt a mounting frustration, a defensiveness on behalf of her dead guardian. "I was _sixteen_ and—oh, I don't expect you to understand—"

"No, I." Han grimaced. "When you put it like that. Not a proposal, like. More a...kidnappin'."

"My turn," Leia said firmly. "Who taught _you?"_

"Paddy."

"Why?"

Nonchalantly Han slugged whiskey. "Ranchers tryin' to wed me."

Leia laughed, then stopped. Then again, harder. Perhaps she should be irritated at his gall, at poking fun. But it would be pretense, or a seizing of the chance to manufacture offense, and that was for cowards. The truth was, Leia had always enjoyed Han's way of puncturing risk with humor.

When she couldn't stop laughing Han laughed too. "Hey now." He planted his flattened palm against his patch of bared chest. "I'm weddable."

"Oh, surely," Leia said dryly, reaching across his thigh for the bottle of whiskey.

Han tilted his head, wry and imploring, and closed his hand on Leia's wrist. "You don't reckon?" The circlet of his fingers was tight, tender, sending thrill arcing through all her—indignation, lust. Leia shook off his grasp before he could sense her pulse.

She deliberately cooled her voice. "How do you mean?"

Something vulnerable and playful in Han's face shuttered in response. "Nah-aaah. It's _my_ turn." He sat forward, stern lines of his face planed in flames, his eyes hard copper. "Luke: he your man?"

"As I said, he is my friend."

"I was your _friend,_ once," Han said.

"You were, were you?"

"Sure was," Han fired back, just as fast. "And you don't rate me marryin' stock?"

A picture of Eileen and Han choosing bridal silk in the general store came to Leia, sheeting her in searing pain _._ Of course he wanted to know about proposal, about his prospects. Of course, of course. Before he asked someone else.

"I'm not appropriate counsel for you to seek on the topic."

Plaintively, impatiently, Han's forehead creased. "C'mon. Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"You...no. No, c'mon, this is your game, remember? That's cheatin'."

"That's _tactful,"_ Leia said.

Han's eyes widened, that copper corroding with green hurt. "Well. Ain't you kind, Miss."

"Must you call me that?"

"You. Are very. Kind," Han articulated through a savage smile. _"Leia."_

Again they sat in silence, this one severed, seething. And then, barking a curse, Han sprang to his feet, leaping to the fire, impressively nimble despite the whiskey. He seized the cheesecloth, ripped it loose from its poles, yanking the wrapped turkey from the flames like a fisherman hauling in a net-catch. He hurled the burning bird to the ground, where Leia immediately swooped down to smother it in a blanket.

Sinking to their knees, the pair stared down at the ruin of their supper, blackened and smouldering between them. Then, at the same instant, they gaped up at one another, breathing hard. They began to laugh, just as hard, together.

"Hell," Han choked, planting a hand over his face, smudging his cheek with carbon. "I'm sorry. Guess my plan's a bust, swear I'll buy you a—"

"No," Leia panted over him. "It was my fault, my invitation, the stove—"

Laughter tapering off into weak giggles, the couple smiled, hesitantly, at one another.

"Whaddaya say?" Han asked. "Time to pitch it to the hyenas?"

But the turkey's tantalizing scent had reached Leia. Hoping against hope, she unwrapped it from its layers of patchwork and cheesecloth, gingerly peeled back the charred, bubbled skin, hissing at he sting, jerking her fingers back. The meat underneath was a juicy, clean white.

She cocked her eyebrow at Han.

"I'm _in,"_ he pledged again, hair and eyes wild, hoarse from mirth and woodsmoke. "If you are."

XXXXXXXXX

They sat facing one another on one blanket, Meredith's wedding-ring pattern. The scorched pinwheel quilt, which Leia had pieced and stitched herself, was draped over their cross-folded legs and tucked taut under their hips, making an uneven surface between them. Dishware made comical and near-useless in this setting, rising and falling on a sea of faded quilting. The turkey piled on a tilted tin plate, the chip-bowl precariously listing, heaped now with butter-crisped cubes of golden stuffing. But whatever the food lacked in presentation, it more than made up for in flavor. And soon enough the pair abandoned the sterling silver and ate like shipwrecked sailors: lustily, sucking their fingers, wiping their hands on the cotton table. Groaning their coarse starved pleasure. Hungered until heedless of manners, of decency.

"Goddamn," Han sighed, when they finally had enough. Not stuffed, but sated. Balling up the burned blanket around turkey bones and remaindered poultry, he set it aside, and gratefully unbent his long legs—still facing Leia, tucking them to her left side. "That was..."

"Delicious," Leia sighed back. "I had no idea food tasted so good, outside."

"No picnics at...college?" He said it lightly, but his eyes passed subtly over her face.

Leia sipped water with parrying grace. "Not much time for picnics."

"No? Hittin' the books?" Han made a jocular fist, socked it softly into his opposing palm. And then—was it Leia's imagination, or did he wince?

Han _had_ winced. Feeling the measure of his ignorance. Pulled from the schoolhouse at fourteen to work the farm, just as his older brothers had been, Han's concept of higher education was limited to the Currier and Ives prints of Harvard that hung in his mother's for-company parlor. And it was in these idyllic scenes that Han had placed Leia, all those nights he'd lain awake in his shakedown roll, picturing her new life. Lettered fellows lining up to court _his_ beautiful, brilliant Sweetheart! To carry her books; escort her to dances, study halls, football games. To vie for her smiles, for her cleverness, for her incredible, full-bodied laughter. Falling over themselves to impress her, the most amazing creature God ever gave breath to.

Not the kind of men to take Leia to the river and undress her.

But _panning for silver_ was not what townspeople gossiped about, either, code for Han Solo's crude seduction ploy. He'd just wanted to share it with her, his interests, his secret boyhood hideaway. Han hadn't even meant to kiss Leia that day—at least not in the increasingly heated and urgent way of the gigcart, the hayfield. At those spots, the risk of discovery had made for effective firebreak.

Falcon Ridge was isolated.

 _I didn't plan it,_ Han silently vowed now to Leia, sitting still facing him, knees hugged to her chest, graceful jaw tilted to the night sky. _Never._ He thought it to _her_ now because he could, instead of to the constant jury in his head, installed the moment he came out of shock. Came out of it fighting, bodily dragged away from the doctor, off the board sidewalk. Took a blasted posse to hold him back but Han's failure still shamed him and—

"The books?" Leia leaned back, taking up his scotch instead of her water. A twist to her lips. "Not so much as I'd hoped. I was hired..." She sipped, sharply shaking her head. " _Hired_ is not the word. I...suppose _beholden_ best befits."

He waited.

"Breha died. My stepmother. In Boston." Leia gazed into her glass, a faint line between her brows. "It was unexpected."

"Oh, uh. Sorry to hear it."

Not looking up, Leia gave a brave, terse smile. Something heartbreakingly _accustomed_ about her expression. She gave a small, dismissive wave. "I was required to work to earn room, board. My instruction."

"Teaching?"

"Kitchens. Waiting tables."

Han near-coughed out his mouthful of drink. This was so far from the fantasy college existence he had bitterly assigned to Leia that he he could not rightly address the discrepancy, even to himself. She'd lost her stepmother, lost her aunt, endured gruelling daily work. All while studying. And after living through— _that._

What came out was pure intuition. "That other dress. Tonight."

Oddly, this seemed to reach Leia more than his clumsy expression of condolence had. Startled, she looked up at him, her expression...hopeful? That it meant something to Leia, that Han knew the starchy dress as somehow false, not of her.

"My uniform. Yes."

Han could have protested, _Never asked you to serve me._ Instead he kept following his gut. "Why'd you keep it?"

"I thought..." Leia trailed off, fingers picking at the fabric beneath them. "I'd make something with it? Patch a sheet, tear it up for rags. For, for cleaning, or..." She trailed off, and then she tossed her head defiantly back, fair skin tinged shield-bronze in the firelight.

"Oh, what nonsense. I stole it." Leia laughed, her face animated with something like discovery. "I stole it! Out of pure spite."

Han's eyes rounded with delight. "Why you sinful creature."

She looked square at him. "You've seen me sin before."

It was his own tactic, turned back on him. Yet Han felt a hot wave of shock, of magnetic attraction, of trepidation. She didn't say it flirtatiously, but it seemed a proposition, of a type that fit with her thrown-back head, her glittering dark eyes.

"Depends," Han said carefully, "on what you consider sin."

She laughed again, this time edgier. "Isn't it canonical?"

Solemnly Han shook his head, channeling the conviction into his eyes, fixed on hers. _Not up there at the river, Sweetheart. Weren't no sin._ He could swear it from the pulpit and not be turned to ash for a liar.

Looking abruptly away, Leia smoothed her skirt. "You've surely witnessed gluttony, tonight."

He refused to be playful. "Best meal I ever had, Leia. Honest. Thank you."

Leia tilted her head back to the spill of night. "I'll expect the same for my birthday." She said it with a careless blitheness.

"Your birthday," Han said quietly, leaning close to point out the constellation of Virgo, "was in August."

Her searching eyes met his.

"Told you true," Han said, simply. "I know you."

Lids fluttering, Leia absently lifted her hands to her temples, where her braids pulled tight.

"Can see you don't believe me." Han set down his glass. "Alright, let's try your game again. A little different. Just answers—"

"That won't...what subject..."

"Wasn't done. Subject is you." Han pointed at her. "Everything I get right, you take one pin out."

"You're that confident you know me."

"I am," Han said, plainly. His stare plain on her too. Chest visible in the open placket of his shirt. His own hair tousled, he smiled at Leia, tempting and flame-lit as the devil.

"You in or what?"


	13. Fire 4

Leia knew Han had always loved her hair. Playfully angled to get her to let it down, when they were alone, the way other men finagled to get up skirts. The latter, Leia would have happily let him, had Han ever asked for that in the gig, or in the meadow. But not her hair. There was something irrevocable about it. Buttons could be quickly slipped into place, dresses and petticoats adjusted. But a woman's pinned-up arrangement? _That_ was a production, its dismantling a telltale endeavour.

Braided loosely at home, or in a messy bun, or slung over her shoulder—wet and laboriously combed through with marshmallow root, drying loose on a lazy ride astride Aldera—Leia's hair was hers. It was of her. But wound and twined and stabbed into place, it became disembodied headaches, weight. The tight, thick plaits just one more burden, expected to be uncomplainingly borne by woman. Just one more way men moved through life unencumbered. Look at Han, grinning at her across this blanket: his hair run wild as ivy, twining at his ears, over his blasted collar!

Often, over the past year, Leia wondered what Whiskey Knot had found more unforgivable: her exposed skin, or her free hair.

But now was now, and Leia realized she no longer cared. She had been public avatar of sin, and she had survived it. Was surviving it, even bending it to her advantage. So it was not risk of civic discovery that gave Leia pause from accepting Han's challenge.

It was that look on his face, that wolfish smile, but under eyes that were frankly yearning. Leia bit her lip at the combination. It was time—past time—to tell Han good night, good-bye. Bid him a final happy birthday and go inside.

 _Is that what you want?_ In Leia's head, her own sardonic voice. _Your empty bed?_

 _No._ Her own wish was to accept. And her own wishes were all she could trust.

Leia reached into her hair. "I'll give you one for free." She tossed a mean tin prong to the quilt between them. None of her hair fell, but there was a sense of blessed loosening, of overall freedom in the lifting air.

Han looked at her discarded pin, then back at her face. Studied her. So close, and so long, that Leia had to consciously restrain herself from squirming.

"What's my choice sweet?" Leia blurted, when the silence became unendurable.

"Butterscotch," Han said, not batting a lash. "Now, hush. Don't try to _gee-haw_ me, Miss. That ain't the game."

It _wasn't_ the game, that was true. And she was curious, too. So Leia sat very still, blatantly—tauntingly—biting her pink tip of tongue, as Han studied her like an artist, about to commit charcoal to parchment.

"You like purple," he said, at last. "Y'know, color of them spiky plants you use in the bath." His half-smile flashed. "But you looked real nice in that blue dress."

"Good guess," Leia said.

"Weren't no _guess_. Pay up."

Another pin hit the quilt.

"Hey-hey now," Han crooned, bending forward at the waist to eye the thin currency between them. "That's three facts, which buys me—"

"You failed arithmetic," Leia retorted. "How's that for a fact?"

"Nope," Han said cheerfully. "Ma drilled my sums, I don't mind tellin' you, Leia, since you ask so mannerly." His eyes crinkled so that Leia snorted—she'd forgotten how pleased Han could be with himself.

"Don't you scoff," Han mock-scolded. "She were a teacher, before she wed my Pop. Better believe I learned my one-two-threes."

"You know very well I scoff at _you,_ you stuck-up, half-wi—"

"See here. It's simple math." Han hitched forward on the blanket, took Leia's left hand in both of his, so suddenly and warmly that Leia's throat sealed off. He unfurled her thumb, his voice gentle and firm as his touch. "One: you like purple." Up came her index. "Two, flowers in your bath. Three—"

"Stop that," Leia managed, trying not to shiver at the achingly familiar, rough-tender precision of Han's fingers.

"Stop what?"

"My hands are—are—"

Was Han leaning _closer?_

"Hmmmm. Whaddaya know." Wonderfully, Han constricted his grip, his thumbs stroking Leia's knuckles, nails, her wrist. "My hands _are,_ too."

"Let go." Leia whispered.

He released her at once, raising his eyebrows blamelessly; even raising his hands momentarily, palm-up, like a fugitive. Deliberately widening his long, expressive digits in a way that was somehow both alluring and ridiculous. Then Han lowered his hands to his thighs in apparent surrender. But he did not drop his eyes from Leia's, oh! those _eyes_ of his, fairly glowing in the dark, like embers.

"Three," Han said, so softly it panicked Leia that she could hear him clearly, what that meant about his nearness. "You sure looked pretty at the Howard social."

Leia heard the words fly from her mouth, would have clawed them back, if only. "Does Eileen _Howard_ know you're here, tonight?"

"No, wh—" Han's irises flared, twin flash-flames. He sat back on his lean haunches, shirt tugging half-open with the motion, or perhaps, Leia thought, with the inflation of his puffing chest. "Ah-hah- _haaah,_ Leia Organa. You are _jealous."_

Leia swatted away his triumphant finger. "Ah-hah yourself, Han Solo." Leia said, fast, as though speed could cool the heat in her cheeks. "Envy is your sin, not mi—"

"Hell yes, it is," Han shot back. " _I_ don't deny it." He spoke it again, low and intense. "Is Luke. Your man?"

Leia lifted her hands to her hair, let them nestle tauntingly, there, in prim woven auburn. "Shouldn't you _tell_ me?"

Something still hotter flared in Han's narrowing eyes. And Leia wondered what she was stoking, in him. "You owe me four already."

"Three."

"Four if you count the fact that you _are_ jealous." Han scooped up the first pin she'd tossed, slipped it like a twig between his full lips. Something wicked, possessive, about his smirk, something that provoked Leia, excited her beyond reason. "But sure. I'll let that one count as the freebie. Three."

"So go for four," Leia said. "If you have the—"

"You came to beat me," Han said. "Yesterday. Me particular."

Leia laughed. "A predictably conceited notion."

"Don't yarn me," Han growled. "Damn, Leia, think I couldn't feel it comin' off you?" He waved a hand at the fire. "Like _that_. Like waves of—"

Tendrils ribboned from behind Leia's ears, loosened at her crown. One by one she tossed pins down, her eyes hot and resistant on Han's. Ping after thin ping as tin hit tin. She did not blink. Neither did he.

"I tell you true," Han pointed, "you better stand down now, if you can't stand to _lose._ To me."

" _If?"_ Leia heaved a pitying sigh. "Feeling less confident in your absolutes?"

"You miss the sea," Han softly accused, walking toward her on his knees. "Not Boston."

Leia paused in genuine surprise. But her fingers conceded, and Han watched greedily as a crucial underpinning gave way, sending a thick rope comprised of smaller braids to Leia's shoulders, bared now by her fallen shawl.

"Ain't you gonna take that apart?" His voice was gruff, his expression needy.

She affected a boredom. "Guess you don't know everything about women yet."

"Didn't say I knew no _women—_ "

"No," Leia said, her smile regretful and acidic. "No, you certainly didn't."

"Oh, you wanna try me, Leia?" Han lunged forward. Landing with the heels of his hands planted on either side of Leia's thighs, he leaned in so close, face to face, that his crooked nose almost grazed her pert bridge. "Your favorite season? Spring. Told me it made you feel green. You're right-handed, can't whistle worth a lick, can't abide cruelty to creatures neither. Sarsaparilla is vile to your tongue and you got the cutest pair of freckles right above your—"

" _Han."_ Leia said it as though holding on, as though astride a runaway horse.

But he went on, pressing close, closer, his tone velvety, fast and merciless.

"You fell asleep in church, once, after I got you home late. Saw that myself, chin propped up on your hand and I felt all guilty, and I felt all proud. Bobby bootin' me in the ankle, askin' me what I was smilin' at. You still got a little accent, little bit. Smart as a whip."

He drew a hissing breath, his eyes ferocious and beseeching. Leia sat stunned, transfixed by this trickster as she had been by the magician. She could not...believe, could she be believing?

Han did not look like he was joking.

"I—"

"Nah I ain't done." With a swift flick of tongue, Han shifted his tin trophy to the opposite corner of his mouth. "You're a good driver, you sing sweet, you can swim like a seal and my fool horse has more heart for you than he does me. You quit your corset and here's a fact, I like that fine. You think polishin' brass is about the dumbest chore there is and _no way in hell_ is Luke your man."

Leia's mouth fell open. Han was a more dogged man than she'd known, before the shooting contest, before whatever duel this was tonight. Though Han _must_ be dogged, Leia realized with a burst of complex emotion, to have saved—

"How," Leia groped for the water-glass, gulped. It did nothing to cool her. "...how are you so sure Luke isn't my man?"

"You know how."

She lifted her chin at this final truth, lifted her fingers to unravel her bindings. Thick locks sprung free and waved to frame the elegant curve of Leia's cheekbones, spilled in lush ripples down her back. She gave a small breath of pleasure, of relief at the sudden release of pressure.

Han gave a rough approving moan in his throat.

And that was it, Leia knew, the point at which Han made it explicit, what he wanted. The point at which he declared his stakes: bid him leave, now, or all would change. Or all would remain the same, whatever was the new same, for them: this sly sweet sparring, this animal circling of one another's camps.

The wind rose, stirring their hair, stealing their breathing.

Leia chose. Pulled that damned hairpin from Han's mouth as though jerking a tablecloth out from under a vase. Just to upend him, upset his intolerable, irresistible cocksureness, just to see his eyes fly open. And when they did she performed for that wide gaze: slowly she lifted her arms in a saloon girl's pose, in a way she knew revealed her unbound bosom, to slot the slick pin back into her hair. Tossed it back over her shoulder with all the carnal arrogance of a thumb hooked into an opened waistband.

There was a crack of timber from the fire, six-gun sharp. Sent up a pollen-burst of sparks, swirling to seed the stars.

And on that report, Han was done talking. Unable to, maybe, certainly unable to hide the hitch to his accelerated breathing. Taking a hairsbreadth gauge of Leia's face, finding a final truth in her smirk, Han moved in. Moved in fast, lethal and accurate as his marksmanship, sinking his great splayed hands into Leia's abundant fall of hair and tugging her close. He wasted no time working up to openness. As she had once seen him hit the ground running, Han's lips took Leia's parted and they parted her own. His mouth enveloping, tongue stroking hers with whiskey and wanting, blazing with some message he could not speak.

Then Han was gone. Drawing slowly back, his eyes half-lidded, plump lips gleaming and agape, Han studied Leia's face with a wariness that was, she knew, truly terror. To find himself abandoned by his surety of her, all the brash knowledge he'd brandished earlier.

And Leia felt her own swollen lips curve. The power, now, it was hers. Even the raw, desperate heat with which he'd infused his kiss hummed now on Leia's tongue, passed to her like a torch, waiting to fire her words.

She could slap Han's beautiful face. As a lady she _should,_ by all local rights and rules, and whatever scruples or insight Han lacked at this moment, that had fuelled this moment, he knew that. He was not her husband, not her pledged groom; not even her secret beau, not anymore. And although a fallen woman Leia could have Han Solo arrested for a libertine; she could have him run, pelted with pebbles on the road out of town. If it was control over Han that Leia wanted, if it was revenge, if it was ruination—if it was an elevation of his suffering to hers, it _was_ hers for the taking. And it was now.

But Han was not scared of that. He was not afraid of judgement, damnation to the fires of hell; he was not afraid of Whiskey Knot. _A man like that,_ Rouge used to say, _would go to the stocks on a laugh._ In his burning eyes, searching hers by dim firelight, Leia read it: he was scared of her. Han was scared of Leia, turning him to a pillar of ash with her laughing push off her, her mocking cool banishment of him into the night.

 _No quarter,_ Leia thought. _You were right._

She whispered it against his mouth. "How are your lips, Kissy-fish?"

And Han, he blinked. And he smiled, the tiniest gratified smile, eyes squinting in excited joyful disbelief.

"Same as ever," Han gasped, as he leaned back in, as Leia pulled him in, her hands lacing into his own hair. _"Princess."_


End file.
